It’s been about half a decade since Massive Attack released their darkly epic Mezzanine, their spectacular musical masterpiece that some hailed their greatest moment. Songs like “Teardrop”, “Angel” and “Inertia Creeps” (which provided the soundtrack to countless adolescent wet dreams) became staples of modern electronic music. Massive Attack themselves were lauded as near-Gods as their contemporaries like Faithless, Leftfield and Underworld split apart.
And now, from the same silence that last year brought A Hundred Days Off, Underworld’s brilliant, shining piece of Tech-house, comes Massive Attack’s newest effort, 100TH Window. Like the Underworld album, the number 100 is in the title. Unlike the brilliant Underworld album, effort is the operative word with 100th Window, because it’s a failed one. Perhaps it’s the fact that the only actual member of Massive Attack to participate on this album is Robert Del Naja, but 100th Window ends up lumped with Sarah Mclachlan’s Surfacing and Moby’s 18 in the sad category of recent pathetic attempts at albums by formerly great musicians.
The thread running between Moby’s sleepy, regurgitated recent effort and 100th Window comes in the form of Irish singer/songwriter Sinead O’Connor. Apparently someone, somewhere decided Sinead should use the new Massive Attack album to stage her attempt at a comeback, and that’s exactly what it sounds like. Gone are the dark sinewy bass lines and traces of Hiphop funk and strength that used to play the downcurrent to the beautiful Massive Attack sound. Instead, Del Naja fills the musical void on 100th Window with flecks of synths and semblances of bass, choosing ambience over music. Take for instance the painfully boring “Future Proof” or the overly-long album closing track “Antistar”. The final track itself is eight minutes long, but it’s followed by nearly 12 minutes of pure silence. This would work if “Antistar” as a piece of music presented something powerful, chilling or epic, but instead it’s just Del Naja’s best attempt at imitating Tricky, with less than successful results. Far too many of the tracks here are allowed to meander into boring, 5+ minutes of monotony. Without musicianship, a groove can’t stand on its own. That’s something the old Massive Attack as a cohesive unit knew.
Robert Del Naja’s take on the Massive Attack sound works for a few shining moments, however; take “Butterfly Caught”, when slow and subtle grooves give way to an “Angel”-like strength. Unfortunately, Del Naja seems to get caught in a pattern, and so “Butterfly Caught” comes to a slow and uneventful end. At his worst, however, Del Naja’s pairing with Sinead O’Connor creates something slightly worse than an Enya/Yanni collaboration, and it’s unfortunate these moments take up most of the album. “What Your Soul Sings” wants to a pop song very badly, but unfortunately it’s too bland and dry of a ballad to even make it on Adult Contemporary radio. Sinead steals the reins on “A Prayer For England” and in essence creates a parody of her very personality, attempting to craft a beat-heavy dance tune about….lost babies in England? Even The Cranberries’ worst songs did better than that.
Maybe it’s the lack of any guests other than O’Connor that leave Del Naja without inspiration to craft something musically stunning. After all, Mezzanine had both Sara Jay AND the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. As it is, 100th Window would have been splendidly groundbreaking as the Sinead O’Connor album she wishes she could make. But for Massive Attack, 100th Window simply doesn’t have…much of anything.
