CD reviews
Tricky's trip-hop and a few other album reviews
Tricky
Knowle West Boy
(Domino)
*6.9*
Goes well with: Massive Attack,
good headphones, weed
Back when Tricky quit Massive Attack and released his debut album, Maxinquaye, trip-hop (both term and genre) was not yet passé and Tricky was the undisputed king. The album was a monumental success both critically and commercially, and despite its rough edges, was accessible to fans of a multitude of genres. The three albums that followed—1996’s Nearly God and Pre-Millennium Tension and 1998’s Angels with Dirty Faces—were dark, brooding, brilliant and anything but accessible. Critics and die-hards swooned, but it seemed everyone else was no longer paying attention.
Perhaps in an attempt to change that, Tricky’s next three albums swapped the idea of making the listener do any work for easy accessibility, and, sadly, he lost most of his trademark originality in the process.
Knowle West Boy, his eighth studio release, falls somewhere in between. Tracks like “C’mon Baby” and “Far Away” are proof that this once great chess master still wants to play checkers. Yet, tracks like “Coalition” and “Joseph” show that Tricky just might have something left in the tank. KWB is immanently listenable, but no true fan could endorse it wholeheartedly. This isn’t Tricky’s return to form, but it seems he may just be on his way.
—Scott McDonald
Juliana Hatfield
How To Walk Away
(Ye Olde Records)
*5.0*
Goes well with: Feist in 10 years, the Bill Clinton era
The public profile of Juliana Hatfield—onetime 1990s semi-indie-rock pin-up girl—has ebbed to the extent that a new release by her is greeted with the question “Wait, Juliana Hatfield still makes music?” Yes, she does, apparently, and her passion for making music seems intact; her voice is still saccharine and enjoyable. Unfortunately, to shoplift a saying from the great Dorothy Parker, Hatfield’s new album, How To Walk Away, runs the gamut from A to B.
Lacking any real heft or gut-punch, the songs blur together into an inoffensive, same-sounding brew that would probably be best served as background music while white couples debate the merits of purchasing an additional set of bath towels. All too often, Hatfield seems to almost be cutting-and-pasting the same riffs into multiple songs. Her lyrical content, meanwhile, vacillates between treacle postcard jottings and the occasional starker, humorous line like “He used to look in my eyes and talk to me / But now we just have sex and watch TV.”
But anytime someone is considered diminished vis-à-vis past level of quality, chances are he/she has a decent back catalogue. Check out Hatfield’s first band, Blake Babies, or her early solo albums, and you’ll find a quality singer-songwriter.
—Ian Rick
Uh Huh Her
Common Reaction
(Nettwerk Records)
*4.0*
Goes well with: Sia, Jewel, diet pills and laxatives
After stirring no small industry buzz with an impressive, fairly perky debut—the EP I See Red—Camila Grey and Leisha Hailey offer their full-length premier, notably titled Common Reaction. Probably meant to satirize either the unwashed masses or a forlorn lover’s infatuation, the lyrical themes and stylistic formulas strung laconically through Common fail to generate anything other than the most mediocre reactions.
Opener “Not a Love Song” certainly isn’t a song anyone would love. The disc’s only lyrically interesting piece, “Explode,” fails to match its admittedly transgressive character sketch (“Watch me I’m a lucky girl / See I like you / So won’t you pay, if you wanna go down”), with woefully mid-tempo, mid-range, middle-of-the-road middling, as if lack of movement equaled meditation, dodo equaled Dada. In a post-Portishead/Beth Orton universe, moody, electro-pop torch divas have a lot to live up to. But Uh Huh’s otherwise capable voices leave far from where Roxy Music let off, unfurling slowly and painfully like female Naked Eyes knock-offs. A brief attempt at Wire-Elastica morphology, “So Long,” devolves into junior-high journaling and bad board-mixing reminiscent of Dirk Diggler’s brief, post-porn musical disaster, “You Got the Touch.” Whatever early spark the project generated is smothered by emotional, rather than merely sonic, wallpaper. Songs for car commercials at least say something. Uh Huh Her ain’t even deeply superficial.
—Will K. Shilling
Published: 09/02/2008
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