Tricky: Vulnerable : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Tricky's stunning 1995 debut, Maxinquaye, transformed hip-hop beats with playful psychedelia; holding together the mix were Tricky's sandpaper, slow-mo raps and the erotic mystique of his chanteuse collaborator, Martina. After that auspicious start, Tricky's releases became increasingly dark, inconsistent and paranoid. On his seventh album, Vulnerable, he returns to Maxinquaye's spacily eccentric electronica -- down to finding a Martina sound-alike named Costanza Francavilla. Otherwise, Vulnerable remains business-as-unusual Tricky, spotlighting his trademark kooky wordplay and experiments with rock -- the alterna-diva vocals and heavy guitars of "How High" suggest Evanescence if they took the brown acid. Tricky's penchant for odd covers also appears, but where before he covered -- and transformed -- hip-hop classics from Public Enemy or Eric B. and Rakim, here he goes totally Eighties with overly faithful takes on XTC's "Dear God" and the Cure's "The Lovecats." Vulnerable is Tricky's most accessible album since Maxinquaye, but it has neither that album's shock of the new nor its enduring appeal.

MATT DIEHL
(RS 926, July 10, 2003)