Tricky is one of those musicians who do not repeat themselves in the awareness of having invented a genre, trip hop, which still influences many musicians today. Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws is a different man since, 30 years ago, he expressed with his music his rage against an ungrateful life and the desire to oppose an approved world.
He is a mature man who has crossed personal tragedies (the death of a daughter) and lives with seriousness all the changes that have overwhelmed the musical world. Instead of getting moguised by a star system based on “likes” Tricky has long decided to make his music speak.
From different albums to this part his research focused on the expression of nuances, on how to make a sound hard even elegant, on how to play with the melodies to convey the melancholic shades of the human mood, in particular that of a man who ages and accumulates scars along his path. From Mixed Race (2010) onwards was a sequence of introspective albums where the trip hop of the origins left the field to slow core spaces made of slowness, reverberated sounds and songs based on simplicity. The opposite of the hyper production of sounds of our times.
It is not surprising that the new album, Different when it’s silent (used for its label False Idols) represents a further step towards a sound that is scarce, essential, deep. A sound made of electronics that dug into the depths of human soul and push to observe oneself and reflect. The slowness of this album is so elegant that you immediately forget about the trash played on the radio and you are absorbed by the low frequencies as by the sublime melodies that enrich songs that is easy to define beautiful.
In fact Different when it’s silent is an album of beautiful songs, in this sense better than the previous ones. The harmony of instruments and electronics creates magic and vocal space is offered generously to the beautiful Mitch Sanders while Tricky cuts out spoken word spaces or deep whispers. But, I repeat, the strength of this album are the songs and their high and homogeneous level. The initial “I still see me there” is an intense slow core exercise in “Low style”: slow, leaning on a painful bass lap and ethereal voices. The repeated melody creates an emotional circuit that invites abandonment. The next “I’m Yours” raises rhythm and tension. The bass line is a repeated and deep note as the abyss, while the distorted guitar only intervenes to emphasize the powerful chorus. “Paris Maybe” is the album’s compositional peak; a song made of minor chords with a moving chorus that Mitch’s voice makes splendid while singing: “I’ll be here, I’ll be right here, What does that say about me? What does that say about you?.
With this album Tricky is saying: “I’m here and I’ll be here”. Serious, solid, elegant. Are you still there?
