100th Window

100th Window

Massive Attack

Virgin Records, 2003

REVIEW BY: Vish Iyer

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 08/12/2004

With every album, Massive Attack explores a new and unexploredterritory, still maintaining the inherent spookiness, which is sotrue to their style. 100th Window, like every new Massive Attack album, venturesinto another strange direction of another facet of their strangeimagination. Bleak, it is, but 100th Window does allow a little bit of sunshine in itsabode, unlike its predecessor, the eerily disturbing and distraughtMezzanine.

Unlike the previous albums, 100th Window has the drum-machine used quite generously inplaces, and the trip-hop sluggishness of this album gets an'electronica' tinge, giving its reptilian feel a blush. As a matterof fact, since the band revisits its more accessible sounds with 100th Window, it has a much more amiable feel to it, and ismore musical than Mezzanine, which was more inclined to creating a spookyaura.

Much less trippy in nature, 100th Window wanders into the new blend of Brit alt art-pop,that bands like Radiohead, Clinic and Broadcast have been into,lately. As a matter of fact, the distorted vocals of singer RobertDel Naja on "Small Time Shot Away" sounds a lot like Thom Yorke in"Everything's In The Right Place," from Radiohead's Kid A: a perfect exemplar of this neoteric blend of Britgloom pop.

With Sinead O' Connor being the female vocal accompaniment forthis latest Massive Attack project, her songs on 100th Window are more driven with feminine power and fire,rather than feminine tenderness and demureness, which ElizabethFraser had imparted in her songs, on the predecessor Mezzanine. No longer as angry as she was before, Sinead ismore pensive in her collaboration with Massive Attack. But, hervocals still make a strong presence on this album, in contrast tothat of the rather tranquilized vocals Robert Del Naja and HoraceAndy, the other vocalists on 100th Window. With Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowels missingfrom the present Massive Attack line-up, 100th Window is devoid of Massive Attack's trademark spookyrap, and as a matter of fact, there is no rap at all on thisalbum!