Monday, February 12, 2007

Massive Attack, Academy, Birmingham

posted by Ronnie Rocket @ 7:02 AM   1 comments

1 Comments:

At 8:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Massive Attack, Academy, Birmingham
By Owen Adams
Published: 12 February 2007
When Massive Attack are great, they transcend the alienation of their moody beats and menacing sonic textures and envelop their audience in a kind of cathartic esoteric rapture. And this night was one of the band's greatest moments.

In Massive Attack's eyes, their audience were engaging in a humanitarian act by supporting the Palestinian refugee children's charity Hoping Foundation, as the three scheduled gigs were all benefits. We received plenty of plaudits from the stage although, quite possibly, many of us had come to hear the music we'd grown up with.

First, though, Jason Pierce presented the latest incarnation of Spiritualized - a sit-down acoustic version with a string section and gospel singers. But it all sank in a sea of mediocrity as Pierce strummed one bland gospel-folk non-song after another, barely acknowledging the audience.

The Bristolian pioneers of what they themselves hate to term "trip-hop" scarcely visited their last album, 100th Window, from four years ago and a solo effort in all but name by Robert "3D" Del Naja. Dense, unwieldy and morose, throbbing with fear and anguish, it reflected the horrors of the ongoing war.

Timely and warranted, then, but it seemed like a dead end creatively, and one missing the presence of 3D's softer, more groove- and soul-heavy partner-in-rhyme Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. But now he is truly back in the fold, he and 3D exchanging grins and laughs as they passed each other on stage.

Since Massive's tour de force debut, the soulful Blue Lines, they have produced just three follow-up albums in 16 years, all progressively heavier and more tortuous, and each painstakingly wrought. The next album will apparently be called Weather Underground - 3D has dubbed it "gothic soul" - but on Massive's leisurely schedule it could be a long way off still, and none of the new material was aired at this concert.

But the most recent B-side from last year, "False Flags" - a piano-punctuated portrait of gloom, desperation and despair - turned out to be an effective opener. It showed that Massive Attack meant business, and that this was to be no half-hearted affair.

There may have been no new songs, but Massive did some startling things with some of the old ones, at times re-energising them with cataclysmic guitar sounds, rather like an angle-grinder and a nuclear alarm siren rolled into one.

On "Karmacoma", the music paused while 3D delivered the lines of verse that end "while you wait for the next Kuwait" for extra effect. And "Inertia Creeps"? In the tumultuous version given here, the effect was quite the opposite.

Screens flashed up data relevant to the cause - child mortality rates doubled in Iraq; 2,500 Palestinian children imprisoned since 2000; one-third of Gaza Strip children suffering from post-traumatic stress - interspersed with dollar signs, while 3D announced that it wasn't all bad news in the Middle East: while we'd stolen their oil, we'd also got their break beats.

The Palestinian DJ Checkpoint 303, who had opened proceedings with a laptop set of dubbed-up Asian rhythms, brought home the debt Massive Attack owe to Eastern sounds.

Dot Allison's quivering nightingale's voice still sent shivers down the listener's spine when they launched into "Teardrop", and Deborah Millen topped Shara Nelson's soul-scorcher crescendos on "Unfinished Sympathy" and "Hymn of the Big Wheel". The reggae legend Horace Andy was also in fine voice, his idiosyncratic vibrato in full effect on "Man Next Door".

I know the earth spins slowly in Massive's domain - but we really shouldn't be expected to wait much longer for the new album.

 

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