TRICKY - Mixed Race

Twenty years of a career are a weight that drags on you, and even the most inspired artists can't keep up the pace the whole way through. Tricky had a moment of emptiness towards the end of the 90s with a run of uninspired records, and everyone started wondering: is he finished for good? But his latest, “Knowle West Boy” (2008), made it clear that Adrian Thaws still has some tricks up his sleeve.  So the question becomes: why hasn't he played them?

“Mixed Race” is a bland, uninspired record, often too muddled, with moments that (and I say this with tears in my eyes) are simply boring. Tricky lets himself be dragged along by an inertia that isn't really his, swinging between highs and lows but too often settling for a middle ground: flat songs with no personality. Sadly, the English artist seems to have slipped back into the dark tunnel of unoriginality he had only just managed to claw his way out of.

The usual Tricky-esque reworkings certainly don't help: “Kingston Logic” is meant to evoke “Technologic” by Daft Punk, but it only manages to grate (aside from a rather seductive bassline); “Murder Weapon”, the lead single, rides confidently on the theme from “Peter Gunn” (Henry Mancini) and, truth be told, it does hit the mark. Either way, we remain miles away from the heights of “Black Steel” or “Hell Is Round The Corner“.

Between flirtatious kick-drum grooves (“Time To Dance”) and embarrassing world music attempts (“Hakim”), only the Bristol dramas of the past century's end (“Ghetto Stars”) manage to stand out, but there's simply too much going on, and a sense of inconclusiveness reigns supreme by the record's end.

What's being asked (demanded?) of Tricky in 2010 certainly isn't a new trip-hop masterpiece; rather, the request is simple: don't make bad records. "Knowle West Boy" fully delivered on that front, "Mixed Race" doesn't.

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24/10/2010