3/5
Heligoland
The morose image of Massive Attack as a band that rarely draws open the curtains is mightily unfair. In the four (largely terrific) albums prior to Heligoland they’ve been fuelled by genuine Molotov-flinging fury, expressed in the weightiness of their bowel-juddering beats and 3D’s loud political proclamations. They’ve soothed fractious minds, too, with their bombed-out soul and sweeping orchestrations, before unsettling them all over again with paranoid gloom. In fact, the black-and-white picture of this outfit as curmudgeons probably has more to do with the members’ icy relationships with each other (Mushroom quit years ago; Daddy G left and then returned) than it does their mood music.
It’s certainly been a factor in the seven years that have elapsed since Massive Attack’s last proper album, a period marked by more false starts than a school sports day. But if the slumbering, ambient nature of the first half of this fifth album does little to alter their sullen image, suggesting, too, that Daddy G and 3D couldn’t agree which side of the road to drive on and so ended up in the middle, then it’s the new sounds further on that do the trick. Stripped bare, these songs sound alive, loose and nimble as the duo shift mood more easily than on the charmless 100th Window. Sure there’s an air of deep melancholy, like on the loping ‘Atlas Air’, which sees 3D mumble groovily over stuttering electronics.
But there’s a snarl amid the despondency, offered by the Kwaito and Radiohead-fusing ‘Rush Minute’, and reassurance on Hope Sandoval’s ‘Paradise Circus’. Guy Garvey shines on ‘Flat of the Blade’, a Robert Wyatt-like digi-soul cut that conjures a sense of dread, and Damon Albarn brings charm to ‘Saturday Comes Slow’, his esteem-stricken lines a match for the song’s reflective wash of guitars. Another year’s work and ‘Babel’ and ‘Psyche’ may have followed suit, but five great songs is better than nothing.
Chris Parkin
In stores now.
