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Tricky made a grand entrance in 1995 with Maxinquaye, a combo
of shadowy electro soundscapes and beguiling vocals (courtesy of his
collaborator Martine) that left scores of imitators in its wake. Six
years on, the 36-year-old Brit is touting Blowback, his sixth
record, as the "real" follow-up to his debut; all the others, he
says, were bogged down by a gloom 'n' doom outlook, whereas
Blowback is rife with better vibes. That's sorta true —
Blowback does offer a handful of near-pop moments. But that
might have less to do with any change of heart than with the slew of
guests: heavy-hitters like Alanis Morissette, Ed Kowalczyk of Live,
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers show up alongside relative unknowns
like reggae toaster MC Hawkman. Though all do a nice job — the
Chili Peppers' red-blooded funk in particular is a nice foil to
Tricky's penchant for fagged-out shtick — Blowback's got
more or less the same slow-burn feel as all of Tricky's records as it
shuffles between murky grooves and spastic beats, conjuring images of
low-rent districts at nighttime. Even if he's let a little sunshine
into his sonic junkyard, it might have been an accident; for Tricky,
as for Beck, there's a thin line between genuine vision and just
fucking around. Where Maxinquaye was both engaging and
coherent, working up to a kind of weird gestalt by way of good songs
and dark sounds, Blowback is hit-and-miss. Half-baked song
ideas pile up next to flashes of brilliance: Tricky's take on
Nirvana's "Something in the Way" is great, with all of the druggy
signifiers in the right place, but it's balanced out by lots and lots
of sameness. And though you don't have to like his voice to like this
record, Tricky's insistence on sounding vaguely like a villain
whenever he sings comes off as sillier than ever — he's really
about as menacing as the Hamburglar. Whether it's a case of too many
cooks spoiling his strangebrew or his vision just getting away from
him, Blowback's messier than it oughta be.
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