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In recent years you will have been hard pressed to find someone who would happily describe Massive Attack as prolific. This duo have made fans wait a full seven years (yes, 100th Window was actually out back in 2003!) for the release of their fifth studio album Heligoland. With a mass of guest vocalists from Tricky’s discovery Martina Topley-Bird to the general genius that is Damon Albarn, there is no shortage of star-quality here on this album named after the German archipelago.
With each previous album there has been ‘the’ single that has captured the public imagination and acts as a musical flashpoint for contemporary culture. With Blue Line there was ‘Unfinished Sympathy’, Protection had ‘Karmacoma’, Mezzanine had ‘Teardrop’ and finally there was ‘Special Cases’ taken from 100th Window. All of these had qualities that set them apart and yet there was a creative spark that made sure you knew that Massive Attack was back. So, with ‘Splitting The Atom’ acting as the lead in taster back in October we all knew what was coming and that we had to brace ourselves for this new direction. It was dark, it was maudlin and it was slightly disappointing. But hey, Massive Attack know what they’re doing, right?
Sadly, it appears that the spark may have slightly lost its shimmer since we last met them. Collectively Heligoland sounds like a tired effort from a group who felt so guilty that they had abandoned us for seven years that they needed to release something in order to quell the constant questioning of both when the new album would be out and what it would be like. On the whole the album never actually rouses to life as it slowly plods through the track listing. The thing is that this is a sound that we know Massive Attack can do, in fact Mezzanine was founded on creating a darker sound that was alien to them and enveloping us in their masterful production. Yet here, it just does not work.
It is not all bad though. The closer track ‘Atlas Sound’ and the Topley-Bird co-written track ‘Psyche’ are actually closer to what we had all hoped Heligoland would be. ‘Psyche’ acts as a well executed hark back to their previous work with the darkness well balanced with the lightness of the vocalist’s delivery. Then there is ‘Atlas Sound’ which again reaches back to a different incarnation that was feared missing, with the whispered vocals and the compliment of the organ and the drum-beats in the background. Both tracks act as a satisfactory counterpoint to the four tracks preceding them with the hope that maybe with future releases and future releases that Massive Attack will return to form.
On the whole it appears that Massive Attack wanted to reach for the blissfully maudlin sound that they helped succeed in popular music but instead have lost their way and instead of emulating Portishead they frankly sound half-dead. The first true disappointment of 2010, and sadly it will not be the last.
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