#15 Album Of 2010: Heligoland - Massive Attack

Heligoland

Massive Attack
Virgin Records.

Original SCQ Review

Released seven years to the day after 100th Window, Heligoland offered ten tracks, just under an hour’s worth of music, in response to years of false starts, rumoured recording sessions, band members cycling through the collective’s revolving door and tons of speculation in need of closure. Many critics who no doubt expected a triple record out of Heligoland in order to appease such an unforgiveable time-lapse found flaws to defend their disappointment. Some, like Pitchfork, reasoned that the record is too “gloomy” as if Mezzanine wasn’t intentionally leading somewhere, and most criticisms have read like empty posturing for a preemptive backlash.

There are real flaws here, although they offer more than they take away. Having been constructed over so many sessions and with an array of side-talents, Heligoland plays out like a compilation – or, a greatest hits - from Massive Attack’s lengthiest disappearing act to date. So although it’s a bit unsettling to hear Guy Garvey of Elbow croon over an experimental track and never return, his presence ultimately leaves a deeper mark on this material than had Robert Del Naja taken the reigns as he did with 100th Window.

For those like myself who hardly expected Massive Attack to return with anything this commanding, Heligoland felt like a lost record reemerging to shake our apathetic clock-tapping. Ten months since that February release, I recognize the novelty of a new Massive Attack album only bridged my will-this-suck hesitation toward full-blown admiration. Damon Albarn, who agreed to steer the recording back on track by famously saying – and yes, I paraphrase – “As long as you don’t pull me into one of your nine-year-long drug hazes”, does so much right over ‘Splitting the Atom’ and the emotional ‘Saturday Come Slow’, whereas ‘Atlas Air’ remains the most insidious beat 2010 produced. An undeclared success.

Heligoland - Massive Attack

Heligoland

Massive Attack
Virgin Records.

SCQ Rating: 84%

After what convoluted combination of trends, worldwide success and ill-timing do musicians no longer receive objective treatment, do artistic merits no longer take centre-stage? I mean, there must be a formula at work behind Massive Attack’s falling-out with critics and the hipster public – 100th Window notwithstanding – to justify Heligoland’s skeptical reception. Was it the selling-out that landed ‘Angel’ in every turn-of-century movie and ‘Teardrop’ in every primetime TV series, back before selling-out was customary? Or did people just give up on LP5 after so many letdowns – those subpar stop-gap releases like Danny the Dog OST and Collected, the unfulfilled promises for Weather Underground that began in, what, 2005? No one-off or shelved project can rival the greatest proof that a critical trigger against Massive Attack exists: that beneath all the indifferent reactions, Heligoland is an enviable accomplishment.

Of these critics, the most bewildering are easily those who insist that Heligoland sounds nothing like Massive Attack. Even without Horace Andy melting each lyric with his soulful quiver, nobody could sell ‘I Love You Girl’’s menacing bass and dark electronics without citing Mezzanine first. Same goes for the highlight ‘Paradise Circus’, which finds that same overcast ‘Teardrop’ magic by stepping into bass-heavy, bedroom-ready rhythms. All this said while keeping in mind, of course, that Massive Attack have crafted a patient career around the idea of not sounding like themselves, so it’s funny to me that those offended by Heligoland are commonly the same people craving for Blue Lines II. Yes, this long-awaited LP is by far their moodiest but, unlike 100th Window’s synthetic layers, Heligoland unloads a multitude of organic, flesh-and-blood surprises. From a blissfully harmonious bridge of dreamy vocals that colour the middle-eight of ‘Prayer For Rain’ (featuring TV On the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe) to the emotive, minor-key dirge of ‘Saturday Come Slow’ (with Damon Albarn), Massive Attack maintain their role as curators to some of today’s best vocalists while pushing their own brooding trademarks to new environments. Even the two Del Naja vocal-turns show tangible intensity missing on previous efforts, culminating on throw-down ‘Atlas Air’ where heavy beats and be-boping synth progressions create a sinister electronic masterwork. Consider it an antithesis to ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ (yeah, deal with it!); devious, soulful and a little terrifying, Heligoland is progressive… what I thought everyone wanted from this Bristol group in the first place.

100th Window gets blamed for being everything from a cold-hearted minimal techno record to a Del Naja solo album (yeah, except with Horace Andy, and Sinead O Connor, and Neil Davidge, and… aw forget it), but what should’ve created a marketing point – Massive Attack’s first album in seven years! – instead weakens the Bristol-based outfit’s regal standing. Unlike the major-label dominated 90s, electronica isn’t starved anymore. Hell, you’ll find more disco beats, synth squiggles and analogue experimentation crawling around popular indie-rock than you could during Prodigy’s heyday, and it doesn’t help that every sleek and sultry electro act has been pillaging the M.A. handbook for the past decade. Seven years is an eternity for a scene this thriving, yet Heligoland (yes, like Portishead’s 2008 return Third) proves the collective’s worth and, occasionally, their domination of a culture they helped establish. A thrilling yet underappreciated return.

15. No Protection - Massive Attack VS Mad Professor, 1996 (Best of the 90s)

No Protection

Massive Attack VS Mad Professor
Gyroscope Records.


I didn’t know Massive Attack, I didn’t know Mad Professor. I didn’t know Triphop, I didn’t know Dub. It’s the first electronic record I ever loved and the best remix album ever.

4. Mezzanine - Massive Attack, 1998 (Best of the 90s)

Mezzanine

Massive Attack
Virgin Records.


In its first decade alone, this record has become a mind-bending anomaly. Think about it: its popularity broke barriers between indie-kids and major-labels, pirate radio and blockbuster movies, obscure electronic subgenres and radio-rock homogenization, geeks who watch House and geeks who watch The Matrix, and between super-fan critics and shlubs who think Triphop might be some follow-up sensation to the Macarena. People of the same ignorance might even argue that such walls were torn asunder thanks to two tracks - ‘Angel’ (heard in just about every self-serious movie from 1998 through 2002) and ‘Teardrop’ (likewise…) but that would be discounting the power Mezzanine truly wields. Those two tracks may’ve taken Robert Del Naja and Co. to a stratosphere most bands dare not dream of but, when all trends die (Matrix wardrobes, lame hospital dramas, Triphop, whatever), Mezzanine will still stand as one of the most influential albums of the decade. Who could question a creativity that melded middle-eastern samples to ‘Inertia Creeps’, Velvet Underground samples to ‘Rising Son’, post-punk era Cure to ‘Man Next Door’ and Isaac Hayes’ swank to ‘Exchange’, all the while perfecting a subgenre they invented? Written on paper, such ideas sound goofy… their odds of success fanatical. Yet Mezzanine sounds virtually free of any samples or, for that matter, any knowledge of pop music before being sharpened and twisted into this nightmarish but timeless exoskeleton.