Tricky: Mission Accomplished : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Tricky has released a number of classic albums that stand out regardless of genre (in his case, trip-hop), from the soulfully skewed beats of 1995's Maxinquaye to 1996's underrated masterpiece of paranoia and bass, Pre-Millennium Tension. Since then, however, Tricky's music has proved as vague and amorphous as his mercurial self. The four songs on his latest EP, Mission Accomplished, continue to wander down that same fascinating but frustrating road to nowhere. The title track rocks harder than anything Tricky's ever done, thanks to some dirty guitars and snakelike bass. Inexplicably, though, on the same track Tricky chants the chorus to Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" over and over. Mission Accomplished ultimately features all the elements that make Tricky distinctive -- dense, ominous soundscapes; strangely evocative hypergrooves; curious lyrical obsessions; and an aggressive sense of experimentation. Still, while atmosphere goes a long way here, the pieces of this puzzle don't fall into any comprehensible form. (RS 862)

MATT DIEHL