Whether due to the lukewarm reception of 2003’s 100th Window or not, it’s been seven years since Bristol, UK trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack released a studio full-length. And while Heligoland has nothing on the duo’s cinematic 1998 high-point Mezzanine, it’s an often-fascinating collection of songs that sees the band complete their transformation from epic, distortion-loving experimentalists to trip-pop progenitors.
The album’s lengthy guest-list works relatively well here, or at least much better than it did on 100th Window. TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Damon Albarn, former Mazzy Star Hope Sandoval, and electronic frequent-feature Martina Topley-Bird all guest on separate tracks, and only Garvey falls completely flat. It’s not entirely his fault; “Flat of the Blade” is a dull, lifeless track, devoid of either the intense instrumentation of past Massive Attack albums or the absorbing, labyrinthine chord structure of the successful songs that surround it.
The Damon Albarn-featuring “Saturday Come Slow,” for example, is pulled from the edge of listener apathy by a suddenly-desperate chorus in which Albarn yearns “Do you love me?” The swirling nylon guitar pluck of “Psyche” is similarly captivating, but it’s on spacious first single “Paradise Circus” (f. Hope Sandoval) that the duo’s marriage of guest to track is most successful. Sandoval’s sensuous drawl is the perfect companion to the tense piano trickle and handclaps that fade lazily in and out of the song, and the strings that bring the song to a close provide a hint of the cinematic grandeur that characterized Massive Attack’s earlier work without seeming overbearing.
And while it’s too bad that a fair few of these songs are a hint too long, (only two of the ten tracks are much shorter than five minutes long) it’s what most Massive Attack fans have come to expect. This time around, at least there’s no eight minute “Anti-star” to slog through.
