Were Massive Attack ever to tire of music-making, they would make rather fine installation artists. The Bristol collective – now reduced to two core members – may have invented an entire musical genre and made one of the greatest singles of all time in “Unfinished Sympathy”, but visual agit-prop appears to be their new forte.
Tonight, on a backdrop that spans the width of the stage, bars of light alternate with flashing transcripts of bombing raids from a recent conflagration (”The rectangular building is a mosque.” “Engage.”). The backdrop becomes a departures board for a while, juxtaposing the dates, times and destinations of commercial flights with the details of extraordinary renditions. More bold visuals contrast the dollar cost of funding social workers in Ghana with the cost of MPs’ expenses for gardening. These displays come in collaboration with UnitedVisualArtists, but the sense of outrage and disgust is, well, Massive. This lightshow is not just there for the unpalatable facts, however. Half a dozen bright blue horizontal lines appear before the band perform a bold, burnished version of “Risingson”. “Risingson” actually appeared on their third album, 1998’s Mezzanine, rather than the debut, 1991’s Blue Lines, but it looks pretty, all the same.
The band’s politics, too, have gained acuity. Massive were, infamously, banned from radio broadcast on the eve of the first gulf war, not so much for their music, but because their name was felt to be too accurate for comfort. A new, equally absurd, ban is now in place. London Underground have objected to ads for their new album, Heligoland, because the album artwork looks too much like graffiti.
Massive Attack’s latest spate of live dates come in support not only of this new, improved album, chock-full of guest vocalists, but also of the Hoping Foundation, an organisation funding grassroots youth activity in the Occupied Territories. “We’ve put all the information on the screens so you don’t have to listen to me talking rubbish,” says Massive Attack mainstay Robert del Naja; suffice to say, Hoping do good work in refugee camps. Shortly afterwards, an uneasy version of “Safe from Harm” comes illustrated by quotes on freedom from Bakunin and Hazlitt among others, regular guest singer Deborah Miller taking on Shara Nelson’s vocal role. Originally, the resonance of “Safe from Harm” came from its very specific and personal sense of protectiveness. The implication now is that, with the world going to hell in a handcart, nobody’s baby is safe from harm – not tonight, not ever.
A sense of grim foreboding is, of course, what Massive Attack do. The cannabinoid fear that suffused their early works has blossomed into a more pervasive horror at war and mankind’s other foibles. Massive glower with towering authority, but their sense of ill-ease can also nosedive into mere moodiness. There are only so many times you need to be told, through great banks of electronics, that the sky is falling.
Tonight’s two-hour dazzle-und-trudge swings between epiphany and finger-drumming. Is Grant Marshall – aka G, Massive’s 6ft 5in daddy – onstage, rapping? Then all is well. Marshall’s deep bass rumble feels fundamental to Massive; a huge cheer greets his every intervention. Is there an over-long guitar solo crowning six minutes of moody directionlessness in which the space between the instruments is reduced to nil? Then it’s brows furrowed for “Futureproof” or “Inertia Creeps”, and the only one dancing with any conviction is Del Naja.
A revolving cast of vocalists keeps up the night’s momentum. Best dressed is Martina Topley-Bird, a trip-hop survivor who first made her mark alongside former Massive Attack member Tricky. Tonight she is disguised as a glamorous half-moulted snake, and her vocals – so louche! – make the new songs from Heligoland (”Babel”, “Psyche”) sound almost like the trip-hop of yore. She stands in for Liz Fraser on “Teardrop”, Massive’s most tender moment, and duets with Del Naja on the live debut of a new, non-album song, “Invade Me”, of which we should not speak again.
As with Daddy G, evergreen reggae vocalist Horace Andy grounds Massive’s music. He has been a presence on each of their records and a link to the sources that first inspired Massive in their soundsystem days. But it is another guest, Gorilla and musical polymath Damon Albarn, who best illustrates Massive’s present tense.
Albarn coaxed significant bits of this album out of Massive Attack, contributing studio time, a guest vocal on “Saturday Come Slow” and work on recent EP track “Splitting the Atom”. The latter song is the high point of Massive’s recent material. It unfurls with Topley-Bird, Horace Andy, 3D, Daddy G and Albarn standing in a row at the front of the stage, taking alternate verses while underneath, a hook plays out on what sounds like an organ. It’s fair to say that standout singles have not been a great priority with Massive Attack, ever since Andy “Mushroom” Vowles left in 1999, and Del Naja supplanted the “hop” of trip-hop with rockist electronics, but “Splitting the Atom” nags in the best possible way. You can’t help but yearn for the boldness, vigour and commitment of Massive Attack: the live spectacular, to reassert itself more consistently in Massive Attack: the band.
Written by Kitty Empire
