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Product Description
Product Description
Adrian Thaws (aka Tricky), one of the key components of Massive Attack around the time of their important Blue Lines album, seemed to find more space to explore his fears, loves and neuroses as a solo artist on this, his debut release, which is also something of a classic itself. Whilst the Massive Attack sound is a standard one of dub basses, Tricky gains greater contrast with his smoky vocals by utilising a disjointed, handmade mix of sounds, from hard noise ("Black Steel") to marimba-like plonks ("Ponderosa") and slow-beat joints ("Brand New You're Retro"). Here, alongside vocalist and one-time partner Martina Topley Bird, Tricky is able to maintain a sense of perspective lost in later works--the recording sounds positive and instructive, as if they were happy just to make a good album. Named after his mother, Maxin, who committed suicide when Thaws was six, there is just the right level of paranoia in the claustrophobia of his rhymes, creating a musical document that sounds homespun and satisfying. --Charlie Porter
Review
Bristol rapper Adrian Thaws, aka Tricky (once he'd dropped the cumbersome "Kid" from his moniker), was hardly an unknown force when he released this debut album in early 1995. His whispered, husky vocals had appeared on Massive Attack's 1991 disc Blue Lines, and he featured again on the trio's next LP, 94's Protection. Maxinquaye, though, was something else. It's hard to imagine how he could have stepped out of Massive Attack's shadow in a more dramatic fashion.
Named after the artist's late mother, Maxinquaye is a (quite deliberately) suffocating delight of oily beats and murky atmospherics, bruised lyricism and crafty samples. Tricky relishes his frontman role, that much is clear from a venomous turn on Brand New You're Retro (which lifts from Michael Jackson's Bad) and the man's captivating performance on Hell Is Round the Corner, which rides the same Isaac Hayes sample as Portishead's Glory Box (which was released as a single just weeks before Maxinquaye hit shelves). But he's not quite flying solo here, as his then-girlfriend Martina Topley-Bird steals the spotlight on a series of numbers. And it's the collision of these vocal styles - one croaky and smoky, one silky smooth but able to bear teeth when called upon - that drives this album to the classic status it today enjoys.
And rightly so, too. Trip hop had reached its creative zenith in the mid-90s, and it was Portishead's Dummy and this collection that gave the sub-genre its twin pillars of demonstrable brilliance. (The next contender would not appear until 1998, in the shape of Massive Attack's awesomely claustrophobic Mezzanine.) But while Dummy was an unlikely hit with the coffee table set, Maxinquaye's oppressive production and oblique lyrics ensured it bypassed cocktail party playlists. It was - it is - intoxicatingly deep, with too many moments of malevolence-meets-melancholy magic to summarise in just a handful of paragraphs. And if that sounds like a cop-out, it partially is: returning to this album is like meeting an ex-lover you last saw a lifetime ago. You want to hold onto the memories, not scatter them amongst the detritus of the present day. Because these songs are possessed by a wicked beauty rarely glimpsed since, in the work of Tricky or any other artist; a beauty intrinsically tied to time and place.
Maxinquaye was both Melody Maker's and NME's album of the year in 1995. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize in the same year (losing out to Dummy). Magazines Q, Rolling Stone, Spin and Village Voice scored it incredibly highly. It has a five-star rating at AllMusic.com. So while it's far from the easiest of listens, even so long after its release, this set is as essential to any record collection as Pet Sounds, Purple Rain and Paul's Boutique. Believe the critical consensus, as in this instance it's entirely accurate.
--Mike Diver
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soundtrack to the English disaster,
This review is from: Maxinquaye (Audio CD)
The thing that really sets this album apart from anything else produced in the last 10 years (including Tricky's other albums) is the lyrics. Like reading Shakespeare or listening to the ramblings of a drunk it takes a while to make sense of the words and realise just how much wisdom there is lying beneath:"You feed me lies, distortion - the English disaster" "I was raised in this place, now concrete is my religion" "We're hungry, beware of our appetite" I could try writing paragraph after paragraph about the different meanings I take from these lyrics and why I think they show us how ugly and scary an institution modern British culture can be, but I could never get the point across the way Tricky does. You know when you hear a tune and it's so good that you're convinced you've heard it before? Well that's how I feel about the words on this album - they sound like they were just waiting for someone to say them. It's not just the lyrics either - the music creates the paranoid mood the lyrics evoke and the lyrics describe the dark lonely places the music takes you to, making it almost impossible to seperate the two. The beats are disjointed and messy - but never just for the sake of it. The chopped up ideas and phrases and the layering of different vocal parts on every song takes you to the twisted place the narrator is living in. 8 years down the line and this album still sounds ahead of the game - phrases like trip-hop and chilled-out are deceptive (even insulting), save them for baby food music like morcheeba. I rank this album up there with all the classics - astral weeks, the stone roses, dylan, marley. I just hope time proves me right!
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark stuff that makes for good bedtime listening,
By A Customer
This review is from: Maxinquaye (Audio CD)
I really like this album. I'd first heard Tricky on the Massive Attack/ Protection CD and from hearing that, felt it was worth taking a chance on his solo album - what a lucky guess.. Seriously, if you want something dark and metallic, kind of fresh out of the furnace sounding, balanced with well thought-out lyrics and haunting vocals this will work for you. It has (for me anyways) a good balance of emotional tones in the different pieces, without resorting to repetition, although this does crop up in a very interesting way for those who already own Massive Attack's Protection album. The two albums, side by side, seem like two interpretations of a singlular theme; the cut-and-pasting of voices and lyrics between the two albums opens another perspective from which to appreciate tricky's work on this album. End result: on it's own feet 'tis a memorable album, side by side with Massive Attack's Protection it offers a deeper and intriguing statement. But then you might just like it for the beats..
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling in every sense,
By A Customer
This review is from: Maxinquaye (Audio CD)
I only got this album recently but wish I'd bought it sooner; it's beautiful...I expected its general dark, paranoid theme but was surprised at how varied it was both musically and lyrically. And the vocals are amazing! Anyone into Massive Attack etc should definitely give it a go...
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