When I first heard Tricky's take on Public Enemy's "Black Steel" back in 1995, I was blown away. It wasn't often in those days that I'd go out and buy a CD on the strength of one song (they were the lean college years and money was tight). But the album turned out to be priceless.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, Tricky is a self-styled studio wunderkind who honed his skills with Massive Attack in the early-90s. After his first single, "Aftermath," was rejected by his bandmates, Tricky struck out on his own. In 1995, he released his first solo album, "Maxinquaye," named for his mother, who committed suicide when Tricky was just a kid.

Going solo may have been Tricky's saving grace, as it allowed him to control his own music. Most of the songs on "Max" simply would not have been made had Tricky taken the path of least resistance and kept collecting a paycheck with Massive Attack.

While his former band did create the trip-hop sound, Tricky perfected it.

Quick genre primer: Trip hop is basically a mix of turntableism, 808 effects and r&b homages. Trip hop (a term Tricky hates, incidentally), is strongly grounded in music that's already been made. Where rock musicians may fashion a guitar riff after one they heard as a child, trip hop takes, for example, the actual riff and mates it with complementary sounds and effects. At its best, it embodies an alienated commentary on pop culture suffused with shibbolethic tips of the cap that only true r&b fans will fully recognize and appreciate. Tricky delivers this combination in spades.

What Massive Attack had created with their epic "Blue Lines" in 1991, Tricky polished in "Max." Songs like "Overcome," "Hell is Around the Corner" (borrowing a beat from Portishead's Geoff Barrow) and "Strugglin'" feature meandering baselines coupled with brilliant noise loops and heart-wrenching lyrics. Vocals come courtesy the thick-tongued Tricky and his sidekick, Martina Topley-Bird, whose vocals in track 5 et. al. sound suspiciously similar to those of ex-Tricky flame Bjork (coincidence? I think not).

Tricky's tenuous grip on his own mental demons comes through vividly in his lyrics. Subsequent listens reveal ever more complicated levels of despair. Tricky's songwriting has an intensely personal edge that draws listeners into his melancholia and almost forces them to understand him (a very difficult proposition, indeed).

"Maxinquaye" is, above all else, a very intelligent album. Tricky's follow-up efforts (Pre-Millennium Tension and Angels With Dirty Faces) have struggled to recapture the same smartness that boosted "Max," but to no avail. What Tricky has in this first album is his masterwork.




Recommended: Yes