I love Protection, its even juicier, sprawling partner No Protection, and the oddly-slick-sounding-in-retrospect Blue Lines as much as anything. But let’s be real: Massive Attack weren’t innovators any more than Nate Dogg or Neneh Cherry or Eek-a-Mouse, all of whom managed to get their respective forms of non-rapped vocals onto rap beats either before or just as Blue Lines “broke ground” by carefully grinding up reggae, R&B, and hip-hop into papers, licking the ends, and lighting up. Their inventions proved replaceable by 1996 or so, when Sneaker Pimps, Primitive Radio Gods, and even Butthole Surfers managed to slow down beats to a crank and variegate their typical alt-rock tunes with found sounds and subtle polyphonics previously unheard outside the hip-hop stratosphere. And the real beat constructionists, homemade studio rats like DJ Shadow, Tricky, and Portishead, were already embroiled elsewhere, having made their mark on the soundscape world, working with horn arrangements or rappers or rock bands. Massive Attack kind of stayed where they were, which yielded beguiling results on the darker Mezzanine and blander ones on 100th Windowfollowing the departure of first Mushroom and then Daddy G.
But even with G back in the fold, where does that leave Heligoland? Though it’s not a disappointing album, Heligoland doesn’t go anywhere new, from its ’90s reject album art to its hip roundup of guest vocalists (from TV on the Radio, Elbow, and Blur). But I’m not even sure who’s to blame. As a “collective” that, until recently, was down to one member, did 3-D mail Damon Albarn and Martina Topley-Bird digital transfer tapes to put the finishing touches on his middlebrow explorations of Blade soundtrack warm-overs? Or did they collaborate directly in the studio? Did he invite them to bring their own songs to him? Should the blame for mediocrity lie solely with the name artist or the guest auteur? There’s not much to tell from these songs, other than they sound like outtakes.
The icky, revolving-door approach is hard to get past, like Santana calling in a star struck Rob Thomas to do him a chart favor. And though the approach has worked before, even with Brit techno—New Order and the Chemical Brothers have turned out surprisingly thought-out records past their supposed relevance, keyed to fellow dinosaurs Billy Corgan and Q-Tip, respectively—it’s always been hard to tell where the “what” and “who” comes from in Massive Attack in the first place. We previously ignored this because we didn’t care, as long as they brought an excellent product. But without that excellent product, they’re more anonymous than ever, though it’s not hard to want to hear Albarn’s stirring, pleading “Saturday Come Slow” or the organ-hooked coda “Atlas Air” twice. I don’t hold it against 3-D and Daddy G for not being innovators, it’s just that they used to synthesize so beautifully—juggling guest vocalists, samples, reggae, symphonies, covers of the Doors and William DeVaughn, even making Horace Andy and Tracey Thorn arguably stronger than their own careers did. But compared to, say, the newly-energized Portishead, their soulless collective anonymity just looks bad.
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Massive Attack: Heligoland
by: Dan Weiss
Heligoland
(Virgin, 2010)
I love Protection, its even juicier, sprawling partner No Protection, and the oddly-slick-sounding-in-retrospect Blue Lines as much as anything. But let’s be real: Massive Attack weren’t innovators any more than Nate Dogg or Neneh Cherry or Eek-a-Mouse, all of whom managed to get their respective forms of non-rapped vocals onto rap beats either before or just as Blue Lines “broke ground” by carefully grinding up reggae, R&B, and hip-hop into papers, licking the ends, and lighting up. Their inventions proved replaceable by 1996 or so, when Sneaker Pimps, Primitive Radio Gods, and even Butthole Surfers managed to slow down beats to a crank and variegate their typical alt-rock tunes with found sounds and subtle polyphonics previously unheard outside the hip-hop stratosphere. And the real beat constructionists, homemade studio rats like DJ Shadow, Tricky, and Portishead, were already embroiled elsewhere, having made their mark on the soundscape world, working with horn arrangements or rappers or rock bands. Massive Attack kind of stayed where they were, which yielded beguiling results on the darker Mezzanine and blander ones on 100th Window following the departure of first Mushroom and then Daddy G.
But even with G back in the fold, where does that leave Heligoland? Though it’s not a disappointing album, Heligoland doesn’t go anywhere new, from its ’90s reject album art to its hip roundup of guest vocalists (from TV on the Radio, Elbow, and Blur). But I’m not even sure who’s to blame. As a “collective” that, until recently, was down to one member, did 3-D mail Damon Albarn and Martina Topley-Bird digital transfer tapes to put the finishing touches on his middlebrow explorations of Blade soundtrack warm-overs? Or did they collaborate directly in the studio? Did he invite them to bring their own songs to him? Should the blame for mediocrity lie solely with the name artist or the guest auteur? There’s not much to tell from these songs, other than they sound like outtakes.
The icky, revolving-door approach is hard to get past, like Santana calling in a star struck Rob Thomas to do him a chart favor. And though the approach has worked before, even with Brit techno—New Order and the Chemical Brothers have turned out surprisingly thought-out records past their supposed relevance, keyed to fellow dinosaurs Billy Corgan and Q-Tip, respectively—it’s always been hard to tell where the “what” and “who” comes from in Massive Attack in the first place. We previously ignored this because we didn’t care, as long as they brought an excellent product. But without that excellent product, they’re more anonymous than ever, though it’s not hard to want to hear Albarn’s stirring, pleading “Saturday Come Slow” or the organ-hooked coda “Atlas Air” twice. I don’t hold it against 3-D and Daddy G for not being innovators, it’s just that they used to synthesize so beautifully—juggling guest vocalists, samples, reggae, symphonies, covers of the Doors and William DeVaughn, even making Horace Andy and Tracey Thorn arguably stronger than their own careers did. But compared to, say, the newly-energized Portishead, their soulless collective anonymity just looks bad.
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by: Dan Weiss
published: February 5, 2010
in column: Reviews
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