Massive Attack - Special Cases : disappointment ???

Ronan - if you've nothing say, wrap up. And grow up, too.

it's nice, as you'd expect. tongy played it on the essential selection so i've only heard it that one time.

100 lines for anyone who suggests that blue lines is better than Mezzanine. And anyone who says massive attack are overrated can report to my office for a damn good caning.

my opinion of the new single? I haven't heard it yet, but i await with interest. i have a query: is the absence of mr.mushroom vowles apparent on it?

Everything I've heard so far suggests that this is 3D's album, which on the face of it doesn't bode well, but I've also heard that it's a return to the stripped down hip hop majesty of Blue Lines. "Unfinished Sympathy", the best record ever, is reputed to be Mushroom and Shara Nelson's work, and the others were supposedly reluctant to include it on the album. Any truth to this?

Shara was cool...'One Goodbye In Ten' pisses all over Gabrielle's 'Gimme A Little More Time' - did you hear the track Shara did with an act called Cuba? 'Black Island' it was called, nothing to write home about i guess...but she's always worth a listen

it's way better than the single a side version.

Ho ho ho. No, in that it's quiet, tastefully ambient, smooth- textured, subtly hints at "exotic" flavors, full of murmuring female vocalists, no hooks or beats or melodies sticking out to disrupt the sound-bath...

Maybe it will grow on me. I like aural wallpaper sometimes. But I expect more from Massive. This is like the atmospheric bits of their previous stuff, with all the hip-hop/soundsystem flavor sucked out. Not much left over.

Ben, we obviously don't hear music in the same way. (Then again, I found a hook in "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors", so perhaps I'm stating the obvious.)

Yes, there's a real boorish, macho, homophobic tone to the music of Enya. "Orinocco Flow" has become something of a gay-bashing anthem, I believe.

Anyway, I like the single a lot. It isn't the best song on the album, but it's very nice.

I prefer the gabba mix of Orinoco Flow, anyway.

Saw the video yesterday - hmmm.... lots of cheapy 'stock' images. Yes, and another foetus. A bit lame and uninteresting, I thought, as their videos are usually stunning.

And if you listen to the Massive Attack album - hardly anything 'ungraceful' about that.
Or the fantastic Beth Gibbons album, come to that.
In fact, quite the opposite - they're both incredibly graceful?

i'm just fed up with how people just say its bland all the time...i mean, so what? a fresh crusty oven-baked loaf of bread is BLAND but it still smells and tastes fantastic...well, i guess you might have to spread something on it first...

the mid-90 melancholic breakbeat feel that people don't wanna hear these days

which people? i suppose you're right - maybe there's nowhere else for it to go (like drum n' bass imo) - i guess '100th Window' will sell considerably less than the last few albums by them, partly because they're no longer considered as relevant, and partly because so many people have/will have downloaded it

It's a very white album too - the switch from Shara Nelson to Tracey Thorn to Liz Frazer to Sinead O'Connor delineates a very straight development from "black" musical values to "white" ones, from warmth to frost. I don't think this is a good or a bad thing, but I think it certainly allows the group to avoid getting stuck. This music doesn't even groove (or at least not much) - there's a supple lightness to the rhythms, which are much faster than is usual, that makes me think of a pulse more than anything else. The rhythms are deliberately designed not to take control of the music, but rather to mark time in a particularly nervous manner, to suggest constant forward propulsion but never taking charge of the wheel.

I'm serious about the Bark Psychosis comparison BTW - you won't find a better reference point for this album than their "Big Shot".

i think that 100th window is absolutely amazing. it is one long flow. kind of oppressing but in a mesmerizing way.

I don't know if I buy the "black" to "white" shift, though, particularly since Sinead was one of the blackest people on Earth circa _I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got_.

Although it has to be said that I have a splitting headache at this moment, and listening to 100th Window feels a bit like the musical equivalent of staring at a flickering white neon bulb, ie hardly conducive to my enjoyment in this state.

matt, i think 3d's singing is more accomplished than on the other albums. it is not sprechgesang it is almost real singing.

It's already sounding better on the second listen.

Most annoying bit of the Massive album? That useless, pointless 'hidden track' tacked on at the end. Dreadful.

THANK YOU! I have been looking for the phrase to describe this album -- was talking to someone yesterday and was stumbling over metaphors. I shall use this now (and credit you ;-)).

I haven't paid the slightest attention to Sinead's lyrics; I'm just marvelling in how her voice sounds.

Me to thread! Oh wait, I'm here.

I mean, I think I hear it the same way you all do. In the moments when I've thought I might get into it, it's because I've thought the "intoxicating density" might pull me in. But then when I listen more I decide it's not actually very dense. There's just not much going on.

But you know, I thought Teardrop was the worst track on Mezzanine, so it's probably no surprise I don't like this.

Dan what I meant is that Sinead's voice is so unambiguously Celtic. Tracey had a strong soul-streak and Liz Fraser is pretty much unmappable; Sinead's vocals (and 3D's Thom Yorke-isms) are the first time that Massive Attack's vocals have struck me as fitting a specifically "white" British experience (an idea of whiteness rather than an essentiality of whiteness).

I've actually always liked Sinead O'Connor though so she doesn't bother me at all - "Prayer For England" is great - although I still contend that the best moment on the album is the third minute of "Future Proof".

The albums' interrelation with eachother interests me - 100th Window def. feels like the Protection to Mezannine's Blue Lines: cleaner, deeper, more lustrous but maybe less visceral.

Eh??? Liz Fraser is the template for wispy, ethereal white-girl voices!

I don't know, it's just with Massive Attack I almost expect all their songs to be good. After the first five listens I was like, "Oh don't worry, it'll grow on me. They still got it." But I'm up to twenty listens so far, and dammit it hasn't happened yet! In fact, I have to go so far and say that both "A Prayer for England" and "Antistar" are flat-out terrible songs. What the hell is going on? Massive Attack in their ten-plus years of existence had never written a BAD song before, let alone a terrible one!! I guess when that Mr. "Mushroom" guy left, he took the band's brains with him.

Cool album cover though!

The exception (by our beloved Nick S.):
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/massive_attack-100th_window.shtml

Either way, I think it would be hard to say it just plain sucks.

Spoecial Cases is easily up there with the greatest Massive Attack moments. The album ispatchy, no getting away from it, butr the single is ....one of 'those' records. Marvellous. Again.

Here's looking forward to the open air Massive Attack spectacular in Bristol this summer. Yes!

Yes Dan but where is she supposed to be from? Can you place that voice geographically/culturally? Her voice is "white" but in a very exotic manner, whereas Sinead is so unambiguously Irish that it gives her songs a cultural persona that Liz's songs cannot have.

(and besides which on Mezannine Massive Attack tried their hardest to make Liz sound vaguely Eastern - she was much more in line with their songs w. Nicolette than those with Tracey Thorn)