Massive Attack - 'mezzanine'

I still love the song though, only slightly only slightly less than I used to. The rest of the album I've not listened to since 98 or whenever it was: an interesting-on-paper-or-perhaps-not-even-that stab at marrying trip-hop and post-punk, but somehow already very much an artefact of its (Serious) times.

That said, I think the band has done some wonderful music, "protection" and "blue lines" the most memorable - and this albumn did them (musically at least) no shame.

is the assumption then that there is an antiabortion message inherent in the song and the video?

you've got to back that up with something

xpost:
100th window is not dull at all. the album which caught best the dark and dense atmosphere in the beginning of last year before bush started his war. it's all about textures.

I love love love the first track on 100th Window but then the rest of the album is a bit like a repeated, slightly less convincing re-iteration of that first track.

If you only count the last album, then yes, I fully agree. But up until Mezzanine: classique. I don't think Mezzanine holds up as well as the previous ones, strangely/maybe because of the punk influence being a bit too overt. Or at least that's what my addled brain makes of it. :-)

I like 100th Window; I never find the right time to listen to it, however, and as soon as I do, I'm sure it'll be one of my favourites.

Too bad. Your loss, man!

I've several Massive Attack live bootlegs that I play pretty often. They did a great extended Group Four when Mezzanine was current, very potent.

Too bad. Your loss, man!

-- latebloomer (posercore24...), October 2nd, 2004 8:35 PM.

I realise that texture is an extremely important factor in music, but if an artist concentrates solely on texture at the expense of other elements the music can slip very easily into self-indulgence in my opinion. That's all.

best alex in mainhattan post ever!

The parrot's dead now, and I haven't played the album in years.

I love the first two as well. 100th Window is OK, but haven't listened to it much. Mezzanine may be darker, but I don't quite get the goth thing! It surprises me that the general feeling is that it's not up to scratch. I tend to think the first few tracks are the worst (overexposure most likely).

The first four tracks of Mezzanine are fucking incredible, really atmospheric and powerful and dynamic too, but after that I switch off completely.

to describe MA as 'dire and embarassing' makes no sense to me. Ronan's complaint seems to boil down to taking offence to them being labelled as dance music when you can't dance to it. if that's true then i agree it is stupid but you can hardly blame the band for this. one man's 90s is another man's heaven. one man's boring is another man's hypnotic/mesmeric/sublime/dreamnoize...

These days I'm mildly addicted to Hymn of the Big Wheel, but I'll still happily listen to all of Blue Lines and Mezzanine. I bought 100W, listened to it a few times, and sold it to Easy Street... I just couldn't get into it. It fell really flat for me, and yeah- those Sinead lyrics were beyond dreadful. I played it in my friend's car once and spent most of the song apologizing for the lyrics.

Teardrop is difficult to listen to, despite being brilliant. The BBC used it all over the place for years (still do), so it's a bit overexposed, for me. I like the second side of Mezzanine the best; again, it's probably overexposure to the songs on the first side. "Dissolved Girl" is amazing, particularly the bassline. In fact, that could go on that thread about songs that are great because of their basslines.

ABSOLUTELY. I remember people were dogging this song left and right when the album came out and I really didn't get it because it's so claustrophobic and pleadingly awesome.

Or he's Anakin S., with more limbs.

xp

holy shit but 'angel' is so good

Best use of trip-hop in a prime-time crime drama. : )

I love mezzanine mostly because I first heard it on a low-fi, busted-out stereo system in a friend's econoline van. It was literally stuck in his cassette deck. I really liked that mix of it.

When I bought it on CD, it seemed too big and glossy, so I sold it. Then I bought it again because the songs are great.

Hoos might now like Blue Lines better.

funnily enough, Blues Lines has nearly always been my *LEAST* favorite of the four albums...

Yeah same here. 'Mezzanine' totally owns the rest of their output. Great grea album.

Always found Mezzanine's desperate reach for "darkness" hilarious. 'Risingson' is classic, but it doesn't count.

All Mezzanine fans dislike Blue Lines.

This isn't true; I love both but love Blue Lines more.

Damn.

like the first three all about the same, if people can HANDLE that truth.

Passive Attack. They had a knack of shedding members in order, from most to least inspired. Mezzanine was horribly overworked and insubstantial. No songwriting skills whatsover. It was where their complete lack of humour and empathy was revealed for anyone who missed it before, but it was always a problem. Man, the pretentious 30-something airheads who inflicted 'Blue Lines' on every vapid dinner party ever held in Sydney in the early 90's. They were responsible for one of the worst gigs ever shoved sideways at an acritical fine dining crowd at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney some time in the early 90's. What a waste of $50. How did they hookwink so many people for so long? Easy. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. All her songs with the band are classics, but what in the band's repertoire can hold a candle to 'Unfinished Sympathy'? The lyrics, the voice... and 'Safe From Harm'...words do not suffice, they really don't. One of the all time great soul singers. The Mad Professor and Horace Andy were no slouches either, but Shara Nelson WAS Massive Attack, and how shameful it is that her name has been erased from the history of this band. She hasn't been mentioned once in this thread. Unbelievable. Gobsmacked.

They should have quit right after Mezzanine. I mean, ffs, 100th Window? Way to spoil all the rest. Mezzanine was pretty good, not earthshattering goodness like Blue Lines was. But then BL wasn't really consistent, which, in my crappy memory, Mezzanine was. I don't know, BL and Protection seem so... patchy but in a way I really don't care.

Shara Nelson WAS Massive Attack

What? She was a great discovery, an instrument. Never would I say she was MA. This is crediting a singer too much. And also Unfinished Sympathy is great but it doesn't make/define MA.

ban moley :-D

I always like it when people (including this poster) accuse a band of crapnessdue to fanbase they had.

i mean, never before have i seen a post contrive to mangle good sense, argument, grammar and objectivity in such a spectacularly comprehensive fashion!

I still think of Blue Lines as flawless. Mind you, I was living in Bristol at the time, so may've been overcome by exotic clouds wafting out of St Pauls.

Protection has some dross and Mezzanine is, yes, humourless. 100th Window is just banal.

the title track (mezzanine) is fantastic. i'd always overlooked that song till recently. really nice hollow sound with perhaps the most subtle and effective methods of capturing mood on the entire record.

as i keep saying, group four is the band's masterpiece. yeah, i'm a sucker for progression.

How shocking that Shara Nelson hadn't been mentioned on a thread about Mezzanine, an album she didn't appear on!

Title track is the essence of the album.

yeah, agreed

Only realised the other month that Inertia Creeps is about shagging.

And a damn sexy song about fucking it is, too.

other Massive Attack songs about shagging:

Home Of The Whale

Only realised the other month that Inertia Creeps is about shagging.

-- Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 13:23 (4 hours ago)

And a damn sexy song about fucking it is, too.

-- Trayce, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 13:28

Cosign the latter 1000%, didn't realize the former!

Moley, please stop inflicting your pretentious 30-something posts on this thread.

I don't agree with Moley, but does anyone other than 30-somethings listen to Massive Attack?

Yes. I'm not even 30 yet, and when it came out, the album was massively popular amongst early 20-somethings. Why? Because it was a classic album, and you knew it right away, that's why. BIG HOOS is also 21 if I remember from other threads, so yes.

but does anyone other than 30-somethings listen to Massive Attack?

i am 29. IN YOUR FAAAAAACE.

but does anyone ever listen to that Earthling album now?

hen it came out, the album was massively popular amongst early 20-somethings. Why? Because it was a classic album played in every Gap in America, and you knew it right away, that's why

No way. I wasn't in America at the time.

I lump this album with Garbage's Version 2.0, also released that summer: call it Fisher Price goth. Both sleek, determinedly (even laughably) forbidding, bought by lots of femme boys.

I lump this album with Garbage's Version 2.0, also released that summer: call it Fisher Price goth. Both sleek, determinedly (even laughably) forbidding, bought by lots of femme boys.

Moley, please stop inflicting your pretentious 30-something posts on this thread.

Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all.Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all. Shara Nelson - the only reason they mattered at all.

BEATING HORACE ANDY AT A GAME HE WASN'T EVEN BOLD ENOUGH TO PLAY

I'm twenty-six and had never even been in a Gap store until a year or so ago, it must have been those cocktail parties I was at in my late teens.

alfred is having a wack attack.

I JUST ATE TRAIL MIX

I'm twenty-six and had never even been in a Gap store until a year or so ago

Ditto. I didn't run with a mall-friendly peer group back then.

what about femme boys?

The fact that your favorite femme boy likes Mezzanine doesn't constitute the universe of all Mezzanine lovers. Please consult your femme boy Mezzanine Venn Diagram before posting in the future.

The fact that your favorite femme boy likes Mezzanine doesn't constitute the universe of all Mezzanine lover

I'll remember this when it's time to make slogans on T-shirts.

I think you'll have to run a grammar check first.

BIG HOOS is also 21 if I remember from other threads, so yes.

-- humansuit, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 6:05 PM (2 hours ago

21 in 8 days, good memory though!

And Femme? Are you femme? Would you like to characterize yourself by some other unflattering stereotype on this thread if not?

I JUST ATE TRAIL MIX

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 7:03 PM

GET BUCK ALFRED
GET BUCK

Would you like to characterize yourself by some other unflattering stereotype on this thread if not?

I'll let you do it. Thanks for the offer.

PROTECTION

TRACEY THORN YO

I'm going to burn it to CD and blast my neighbors!!

*evil grin*

i do think this is their best album by far, for exactly the reasons marcello derides it, "ploddy bass and pseudo-goth drums"

Mezzanine is my fave too, and i loved the 1st 2 when they came out but this album is just perfect.

1998

this version of teardrop with martina doing the singing is interesting becasue you can hear all the lyrics i'd never been able to work out the opening lines before:

"love, love is a verb
love is a doing word."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK-m_gVcUZ8&feature=player_embedded#!

also the closing lyric seems to be "no [or you're] stumbling in the dark/ stumbling in the dark"

i missed a full stop there after lyrics.

cool find, i never knew what that last line was.

ugh this album is so good. i think my fav is "dissolved girl."

man "Teardrop"

http://www.factmag.com/2013/11/01/massive-attack-may-release-mad-professors-lost-dub-version-of-mezzanine/

THIS HAS TO HAPPEN.

they released one or two of the 'unreleased' ones via the web or exclusive mixes, iirc. so a fair number are out there...

https://pitchfork.com/news/massive-attack-reissue-mezzanine-as-dna-spray-paint-yes-you-read-that-correctly/

Ah that's a bummer, US tour dates postponed, reschedule announcement next week for fall.

Friend saw them in London last week and said it was lifeless and pretty boring. Not sure what excuse they're using for postponing, but I wouldn't be surprised if these don't actually get rescheduled.

Huh. Guess we'll see.

Yeah my friend said it was dull as ditchwater.

Bummer. Sounded very exciting on paper

i have not heard good things about this tour otherwise I might be trying to go

massive attack have always been a big deception in concert. i saw them a couple of times in the early nineties and it was always dull. somehow their music is not made for live shows. i love the albums though even 100th window.

Ticket prices for DC were really high. Made me hesitant

posts on facebook about the current north american tour thus far seem pretty positive?

I'll be heading out tomorrow night!

Yeah, the show here Saturday was, frankly, the best concert by anyone I've seen this year, and I did not expect to type that before seeing it. The posts just upthread, so not the case with what we experienced. My girlfriend's thoughts on it were more deep than I could convey and she's only shared them with a close circle, but I'll echo her in that it was an astoundingly good meditation on audience expectation, transforming the 'band plays classic album' approach, nostalgia in general and much more. Now granted, I've never fully dived into Adam Curtis's work, so what may seem truly striking to me when it came to their visuals may simply be run of the mill for others. But it was crucial to the whole experience, and the sense that it was being regularly updated too was key. Meantime, having never seen them live before either, this may also be their s.o.p., but their aggressively anti-star/showmanship approach worked a treat for me -- all the musicians lurking at the back of the stage, del Naja only coming up front for a few vocal turns, otherwise ceding the space to Horace Andy, Liz Fraser et al. (So wonderful to finally see him live, so great to finally see her again for the first time in 26 years.) No intros, no encores, but also, to expand on an earlier point, no simple playing through of the album at all -- I knew about the Bauhaus cover but none of the others, and it was a fascinating reclamation/reintepretation project with the resequenced album choices. I was properly amazed/amused by them actually playing "10:15 Saturday Night," then doing "Man Next Door" and not simply using the Cure sample but replicating it live at the slower pace. But the gut check time was the Pete Seeger cover and how it was used, staged and presented.

Wait, Liz is touring??? Oh brother, I'll be in the corner crying.

She sure is.

It was really good. the venue and the crowd were not. I had to retreat to the balcony to get away from apparently newly-returned burners who were pissing me off almost everywhere I went on the floor.

I liked the performance a whole lot, and I liked the films; but my wife didn't and I know some others who found them overly heavy-handed and obvious at times.

Venue was great, crowd was as well as could be expected in a near-stage general admission area, and the show was requisitely intense. The humorous bits of the visual play were a little less tongue-in-cheek and more blunt, and the harsh bits pretty harsh, but it gelled.

The ending with two displays on either side reminded me of an optometrist doing the “look to the center, can you see the figures to the top and bottom? And now?” Only it wasn’t letters or hands, but war and surveillance

Band and Liz were top notch!

why must the nyc show be on a thursday

oh shit, that's tonight? oh well.

I saw them on what most have been their previous tour and, like Kraftwerk live (and then some), it was much more impressive than I might have imagined. I want to say when I saw them the guest vocalists (like Fraser) appeared and disappeared as needed.

Wait, Liz is touring??? Oh brother, I'll be in the corner crying.

― Johnny Grottan from the Skeks Pistols (Leee)

Saw them do this in London and definitely had moist eyes during Teardrop, appropriately.

so gutted to have missed this during their European tour

Also saw this last Saturday. Group Four was all time live with Liz. Holy shit guys

This was as good as something of this sort could be, imo. They sounded great, and despite the facile Banksyness of the visual/textual content it had a lot of poignant moments, like when Liz sang "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" against a backdrop of war footage - I choked up. The Bauhaus cover was fabulous and exhilarating.

Wait Liz is singing Risingson?

Nope.

Yeah just checked the setlist, she does a Pete Seeger cover then. It’s fucking awesome they’re doing covers of some of the samples within the album.

Is Bela Lugosi’s Dead sampled in Mezzanine?

despite the facile Banksyness of the visual/textual content

Well, Banksy IS in the band

This was super good

feel like I short-changed Horace Andy who probably never needs the shout out, but deserves it

I... am not really sure whether I liked this or not. something wasn't totally clicking, and I'm not sure what -- it wasn't the visual (heavy-handed but I was more or less expecting it to be), I don't think it was the arrangements (although it was a bit disappointing dissolved girl was playback, and I... wouldn't necessarily have put "levels" on the setlist). the energy felt 75% maybe?

really what is the deal with the "levels" bit? does it make any sense at all in the context of the show

Katherine yeah, it didn't really hit for me either.

xp I assumed it was some sort of commentary on tim bergling's death, maybe?

Maybe just hard to live up to the imaginative world that the original audio conjures

yeah

If I’m lucky, I’ll see them with Liz Fraser tomorrow. She’s been performing with them a few times on this tour, apparently they do a mean Song to the Siren now

oh WHAT - they're doing Song to the Siren now? I saw them in SF years ago pre-pandemic and that was NOT on the playlist!

Apparently they do. We’ll see tonight.

They did. Very stripped down, only Fraser and a guitarist. Fraser was great in general on the four or five songs she was on. They brought on Young Fathers too, for a few songs (which may have been Young Fathers’ songs, actually, I’m not sure. Good show overall, they seemed in decent shape. Heavy on Adam Curtisesque graphics, on which I guess ymmv. But I think it worked pretty well.