Tricky's Excellent Blowback

Generally, I preface words of gushing praise with a snarky comment or two, so as not to discredit my hard-nosed opinions with too much childish enthusiasm, but sometimes I just can't be bothered. Sometimes I just have to come right out with it. So here's what I think about Tricky's new album: Are you ready? I love this record. Every last note of it. Wouldn't change a goddamn thing.

Before you dismiss what I have to say as the ravings of some overzealous schoolgirl, let me defend myself. I'm not some diehard Tricky fan who thinks everything the perpetually stoned half-black Englishman does is genius (as you can see from the cover art, Blowback refers to the mouth-to-mouth transmission of pot smoke). Since the success of Maxinquaye in 1995, Tricky's contempt for commerce?i.e., his fans, his record label, other musicians, money?seemed to render him incapable of putting out anything that wasn't totally unlistenable. Or maybe his bad attitude was just masking his fear of failure after such a huge success. Whatever the psychology behind his compulsion to produce shitty music, Tricky Kid has worked it out.

Prior to Blowback's release last month, word was that Tricky was staging a comeback of sorts, that he was coming out with the record we've been waiting on for six years. It took me a full two days after obtaining the record to get around to listening to it. I did spend some time checking out the liner notes, though. They read like a gimmicky who's who of "over" pop stars. Tricky, our Tricky, my misanthropic, lyrical, foulmouthed Tricky collaborating with the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Alanis Morissette? Covering songs by Nirvana? Scary. Actually, kind of intriguing. When I finally got around to listening to Blowback, I was in the car on my way to the grocery store. I never got there. I was so floored by the experience of this album that I just drove around town listening to it until my engine overheated.

The thing about such a collaboration with all these mainstream people is that it's genuinely about Tricky's joyous relationship to their music and not about some attention-grabbing gimmick. I mean, it may very well be a great marketing strategy to have such a diverse lineup (it doesn't stop with Alanis Morissette; the roster also includes the Eurythmics, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ed Kowalczyk), but each song is so clearly its own entity that whether it was cowritten by Anthony Kiedis or Annie Lennox is totally beside the point. Tricky molds each track in such a way as to preserve the familiar essence of the artist he's working with, while at the same time providing a totally unique vehicle for the song's words and music. A song like "#1 Da Woman" flashes the familiar exuberant guitar and bass riffs of Chili Peppers John Frusciante and Flea. But with Tricky's own gritty vocal style in the mix, this track manages to deliver the best of both worlds?very Tricky, very Chili Peppers, but like nothing you've heard from either before. Then there's the unavoidable presence of Tricky's featured vocalists and newest proteges?an underground diva known as Ambersunshower and Hawkman, the graceful ragamuffin from the Bronx. Mediated by Tricky's vocals, their voices play off one another throughout the record, and are at times so mesmerizing that when songs like the metal-esque anthem "Bury the Evidence" or the soft, tinkling number "Your Name" come to an end it's like waking up from a dream.

I shouldn't forget to mention the haunting cover of Nirvana's "Something in the Way," on which Hawkman soars through Kurt Cobain's lyrics, or "Five Days," the sexy, sad duet between Tricky and, yes, Cyndi Lauper. Anyway, I could ramble on and on about the virtues of this album, but I'm afraid that I'll discredit myself even further in the eyes of my discerning readers. I just love this record. What more can I say?