Customer Reviews
My favourite, and first, album by Tricky - By: D. Martin, 11 May 2007 
Yeah, this is good. I don't think there's a weak track on this album. As always, Tricky sounds almost asleep when he's actually part of the track - often you get other folk singing... with a bit of Tricky whisperingin the background... or growling... or sounding like he's challenging the world record for speaking while holding gravelin his mouth. Smart stuff.
Is it deep? I dunno... I like it is all I'm saying... there might be a 'message' or twoin the tracks - hell, it might be full of 'messages', but I just really like 'em. It chills me out to listen to this, all the songs sound pretty unrushed, like there's all the timein the world - except maybe for Black Steel & Brand New You're Retro of course.
Lyrically this album is clever & it rhymes a lot... nothing wrong with that, I like it. Best tracks are Ponderosa, Hell Is Round The Corner & Suffocated Love.
Maxinquaye - By: Demob Happy, 18 Mar 2007 Every generation has music that defines their era &in the mid-nineties it was the output of Massive Attack, Tricky & Portishead that has the greatest resonance. Like watching 'This Life' these albums transport you to a specific time & place: pre-millenium, pre-9-11, pre-Blair... Although they coincided with the media-hyped emergence of Britpop & Radiohead's The Bends, it is the sound of the Bristol 'Holy Trinity' that is most redolent of that period. Twelve years on (I can't believe it!) I bought the CD having only owned the cassette (really) & not having listened to it of late. Whereas Portisheadin particular had to contend with a plethora of interior imitators, Tricky's sound was harder to replicate, even superficially: the weed-induced paranoia, the sexual ambiguity & provocation, the muttered half-raps, the male-female vocals lessin duet but rather hybrid forms of Tricky's own perverse identity. It has not (quite) lost any of its power, & still has to be considered one of the great albums of the period, even if a few tracks have dated a little.
'Overcome', the opener, I feel has suffered the worst. The lyrics recycled from Tricky's raps on Protection are sung blandly by his original muse Martina Topley-Bird, & the pan-pipesin the chorus seem so cliched now. It's garden variety trip hop & was surprising used as the closing track on Island's Tricky retrospective, A Ruff Guide (not the only discrepancy on that play list). 'Ponderosa' is still fantastic, even if the production sounds a little flat now, with a loop that sounds like Tom Waits playing on a skull drum kitin Haiti. Topley-Bird reminds us of how unique her voice sounded then (pre-Mike Skinner, pre-Lilly Allen), its Grange Hill sneer over Tricky's marajuana-psychosis lyrics: "underneath the Weeping Willow lies a weeping wino". 'Black Steel', for all its grungy cross-over appeal, remains a brilliant reworking of the Public Enemy original & one of the last great examplesin the dying art of the cover version. The stoned & jaded (and recylced) lyrics on 'Hell is Round the Corner' complement the Isaac Hayes sample as effectively as Portishead's similar 'Glory Box', & feels strangely like the album's centrepiece. Oddly grandiose, but at the same time obscure, it was an odd choice for a single at the time but still stirs up some unusual feelings.
Superficially 'Pumpkin' is vapid trip hopin the mold of Overcome & a waste of Alison Goldfrapp's obvious talents, but it is given levity by the Smashing Pumpkins sample & Tricky's own near-comatose contributions. Its low-key finish - like wind-chimes rotatingin slow motion to a beautifully blunted hip hop break - is a great end to the old cassette Side One. 'Aftermath', always the album's most overrated track & first single, started sounding dated by the time trip hop wasin full swing, its low slung funk & 'jazz flute' too reminiscent of numerous other hideous 'chill out' acts. I can imagine this is what Tricky was subsequently trying to distance himself from on Pre-Milennial Tension. 'Abbaon Fat Tracks' is still startlingly provocative & erotic, not least for having Topley-Bird sing about anal sex & the general stickiness of the production: all warped soul & sitar exotica. Both sensual & pornographic, it reeks of sex & intimacy, as does the dissection of Tricky & Martina's relationship on 'Suffocated Love': "I keep her warm but we never kiss ... she cuts my slender wrist'. It is partly these tracks that make Maxinquaye so superior to its goatee-stroking bandwagon contemporaries, the use of soul & hip hop as an window into a private world. It makes the listener strangely complicit by forcing us into a queasily voyeuristic position; more simply, its a great sex album.
'You Don't' is still a wonderfully singular piece of soul that is suggestive of early Massive Attack & is without comparison on the album, while 'Strugglin' is a massive indulgence & a sign-post to Tricky's subsequent self-destructive inability to harness his talents into something listenable. The beautiful closer 'Feed Me' ends Side Two on a similar somnabulant note to the first side, slow-motion soul for the end of the 20th century to file next to Unfinished Sympathy. In conclusion then, its still brilliant, & not to be confused with much of the posturing Hoxton wine-bar background music being mass-produced at the time. One of the last truely original great albums.
Still moves me - By: mettest, 10 Feb 2007 I bought this albumin March 95, & it still holds. Keep coming back to it, every now & then. Just have to hear "Overcome" or "Pumpkin"in another context, & I think: yes, that was a good album, & I put it on... & it's just as great an experience now as it was the first time I heard it. You cannot overrate it! It's as integrated an album as the Beatles' Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper; & if that doesn't mean anything to you, well that's your problem!
Every tune leads into the other, they are magnificent by themselves & outstanding as part of a whole. One hell of a modern symphony, if you like!
A classic album that should have been a major influence. - By: Si Thorpe, 06 Oct 2006 I remember getting this album on the day it was released & being absolutely bowled over by it's inventiveness & originality. Sadly at a time when Hip-Hop has descended into a macho-fest of guns & bling it still stands out as a sign of where hip-hop could have gone. It should heve paved the way for lots of people to experiment & put their own sound together but somehow it & Tricky seems to have just stayed as a one offin that world & it's worse off as a result. Maxinquaye appears to have influenced very people with the exception of Indian rapper Mukul whose excellent Stray album seems to have taken that ball & run with it & arguably less succesfully Anticon's acts like Why? Nosdam etc.
Where did it go wrong? it should have been a shining new dawn. Nevertheless it still more than deserves to be regarded as a classic album & is essential listening for anybody with the slightest of interestsin music.
Just Buy Massive Attack Instead - By: Mr. B. W. Alexander, 05 Oct 2006 
I cant say i was completely surprised by the overall rating of 4 + half stars awarded to this album, it being considered 'a classic' & all. However i feel it worthwhile to point out that the chap who gave it 1 star is probably more on the money. This album is completely over-rated, like a really, really sub standard massive attack. At some points he even wholesale re-cycles loads of massive attack (as well as portishead - lazy git!) lyrics, which would be somewhat forgiveable if they were presentedin a clever alternate musical context - but they aren't. The songs (and sounds) are really contrived. Sure, there's the darkness & paranoia you expect but here it just sounds dirgy + boring. It's that mid-ninties Bristol sound by numbers. Actually, the cover of Public Enemy's 'Black steelin the hour of chaos' provides the only highlight & i have to say it rocks. Wicked reinterpretation, try & download it something, 'cos its really not worth buying the whole album for.
