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Tricky | Blowback

He's back, and he's not weird anymore!
CD, Anti/Epitaph

Tekst: Omar Muñoz-Cremers

Publicatiedatum: 17 juli 2001

In 1995, Tricky appeared alongside Goldie like one of those figures out of a Philip K. Dick novel: travellers who got lost in space, only to return after years as dark messiahs whose intentions are never quite clear. Tricky's debut, it almost goes without saying, is one of the great albums of all time, and he even survived the instant classic debut jinx with both 'Pre-Millennium Tension' and 'Nearly God'. For a while, the world seemed possessed by Tricky: He was there with you as you walked the streets at night, he looked over your shoulder when the hydro-chronic made you paranoid, he made you dream of lost origins in languages you never knew. After that golden year, Goldie almost self-destructed on a high of pretension, finally reduced to acting the same petty gangster in EastEnders and Snatch. Tricky, meanwhile, somehow got stuck after his third album, his long-time muse marijuana turning against him. And so, after two mediocre albums and a new health regime, Tricky returns with 'BlowBack', which, surprisingly, is released by American punk label Epitath. Things start off quite well with 'Excess', a tight, almost reassuringly familiar Tricky track. That will be the last good song you will hear for the next hour or so. What you find in between is one of the worst albums in recent memory. It is a document of somebody with amazing talent and alien vision losing the plot completely, giving up hope. It would be quite easy to dismiss 'BlowBack' only through the choice of collaborators, an astonishing collection of has-beens (Cyndi Lauper), soon-to-be-has-beens (Ed Kowalczyk from Live), and never-should-have-beens (Alanis Morissette), but these are just superficial warning signs that tell you that something is wrong. Getting into track four, it is clear that some evil spirit has taken over our former superhero, replacing him with a soulless demon. Tricky, once an androgynous alien fond of wearing dresses and make-up, jams with pathetic boneheads Red Hot Chili Peppers, resulting in the laughable funk metal-by-numbers 'Girls'. Along the way, we find a mindboggling cover of Nirvana's 'Something in the Way', mindboggling because it's awful, but also because it becomes apparent that Tricky in his mind was toying with a "masterplan" to crack the American market... of the year 1992. Only towards the end with 'A Song for Yukiko' does some of his old grace and brilliance shine through, a forlorn jazzy piano sample flows under the voice of a Japanese woman, but it is all just too little, too late. All dub, all beauty, all futurism sacrificed for mental sanity, a trade-off that had to be made for Tricky to survive, but for us to curse forever. Man, you used to be a beautiful mess, now you're just a mess.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/tricky/blowback/1033/
Meer Tricky op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/tricky