Heligoland

Sorry it took a while for this post to appear, I've been a lazy sod again. I could've reviewed Massive Attack's new one Heligoland days ago, but I guess I'm just too good at procrastinating. On an unrelated musical note, Ash (one of my favourite bands) did a live performance/Q&A session yesterday, streamed for free from their website. I'm not sure why they did it (I just got an email telling me it was going to happen the day before) but I thought it was a great idea and more bands should do stuff like that to show their appreciation for their fans. They played a wicked set too (true, it was only 7 songs, but the guys chose them very well). It included my favourite Ash song, 'A Life Less Ordinary' (recorded specifically for the film of the same name). Ash have been releasing a lot of new material lately via their A-Z Series, a series of 26 singles released over an entire year, one single every two weeks. Anyway I've been properly getting back into them lately so in recognition of this (also, so it doesn't look like I'm completely Damon Albarn's bitch... I am anyway) I have changed the song at the top of the page to 'A Life Less Ordinary' and the subheading to said song's title. It's pretty appropriate seeing as the theme for my life recently seems very much to be love and it's a dead romantic song (well I think so anyway). Anyway, onto the review!

Massive Attack - Heligoland
I'll admit, I was really looking forward to this when I first found out about it. Massive Attack were pretty much dead as far as I was concerned; they hadn't really done much since 2003's 100th Window and that one basically passed me by as well. So to find out that they were actually going to release a whole new album for so long was pretty damn exciting. I don't really know what I expected from Heligoland, but I suppose I was excited to see if their sound had drifted off in a completely different and new direction.

To be honest, I was a bit let down when I first heard it. For the most part, Heligoland sounds like standard Massive Attack only a bit tedious and well... boring. There are a few moments on the album where they do really well (most notably 'Paradise Circus', 'Babel' and the previously released 'Splitting the Atom') but even these moments of brilliance don't sound very much different to stuff they were churning out over ten years ago. You'd think by now they'd be able to evolve their sound a bit. The bad songs aren't that terrible, they're just usually ruined by one or two elements. For example, 'Rush Minute' would be a good song if Del Naja's vocals weren't so shit; he just drones on in the same monotone for the whole song. In contrast, the main reason why 'Paradise Circus' is the album's high point is because of Hope Sandoval's beautiful voice (and a brilliant vocal melody).

For the most part Heligoland is a pretty dark album (even for them) with the exception of maybe 'Babel', a track possessing one of the most upbeat and jumpy beats they've ever created. The song still retains a fairly dark atmosphere, but you get so caught up in that swirly beat that it's not very noticeable. 'Pray For Rain', the opening track, is probably the darkest piece of music on here and isn't really the most obvious choice for an opener, but it works. The only problem with it really is it drags on a bit too long. Unfortunately Heligoland is niggled by loads of little problems like this all over the place and while it is a good album, it could have been a lot better.

Rating: 6/10
Released: 8th February 2010