Best Tricky Album Poll

I think PMT was just in the air at the right time, growing up (sisters played it, well before I was ready for it on my own).

I think PMT has the same problem that Maxinquaye that it feels frontloaded, but where Maxinquaye still has good moments in its second half, PMT falls apart from Ghetto Youth onwards. It has some interesting ideas but they feel very undercooked to me.

However if you take into consideration that Nearly God and PMT were released in 1996 I don’t feel harsh about both records. They’re not perfect but if you take the best cuts from both into perhaps a 10 track album you honestly get an even better album than Maxinquaye

Also I don’t know what’s the story behind it but the Weekend Mix of She Makes Me Want to Die is the version I was most familiar from and the one I like the best. No idea if it was an official remix, it seems it’s not but I remember it was more popular than the actual album one. I might be misremembering but I think even the music video that they played on mtv had the remix? Last time
I checked on youtube the remix has more views than the original one.

I was the most familiar with*

New one's sorta reminding me of Lisa Germano's No Elephants, another super melancholy album that benefits from somewhat counterintuitive sequencing.

Might as well play god and choose the 10 songs I’d use to make a better 1996 Tricky album:

Vent
Christiansands
Tricky Kid
Bad Dreams
Makes me Wanna Die
Together Now
Poems
I Be The Prophet
Black Coffee
I Sing For You

New album is interesting... a bit all over the place as usual - I agree the counterintuitive sequencing works - and half of it doesn’t have that trademark Tricky sound - not necessarily a bad thing - but it also has some of the best work he has done in years. It sounds like he actually cared about this one and put in the extra time and work before releasing it.

xpost LOL at just replacing the second half of PMT with Nearly God tracks but that is consistent with my recollection of PMT.

I think I'll give Moka's tracklist a shot - never listened to Nearly God anyhow

Nearly God >> PMT

PMT >> Nearly God >> Maxinquay.

Excited to hear the new one.

Maxinquaye is all-time for me, but I've never managed to get into his subsequent material. I doubt I've tried hard enough, though.

PMT was definitely his peak (and the live show, performed in near-total darkness, was stunning). I love that record and nothing he's done since has come close.

I've never heard Nearly God and it's not on Spotify in the US.

I felt at the time that PMT=Nearly God, sort of like two sides of the same coin (a la Achtung and Zooropa, or Laid and Wah Wah). I've never been able to figure out how he could come out of the gate so strong, with three awesome records, and then just sort of ... deflate.

Love PMT, and feel like it's an unrecognised stylistic godfather of the melancholy/dark/emo hip-hop that has come out in recent years.

Tricky Kid one of my favourite 90s tracks by anyone, and one of the most convincing conjurings of the experience of drug-induced paranoia, with those repeated lyrics, overlapping vocals and constant brooding menace.

Agree it does sag in the second half, mainly because Side 1 is so jaw-dropping and impossible to adequately follow. Might have worked better as an EP. Wish there was an official release of the near-darkness live show from that era, would love to watch that.

Nearly God is one of those albums I would like a lot more in isolation but it's so connected to PMT for me that it sometimes feels like an unnecessary coda with the exception of "Tattoo", which is the aural equivalent of being stuffed into a small box and slowly suffocated with a pillow (to be clear, I fucking love it)

There's only the narrowest gap between them but I love them pretty much in the order that I first heard them: PMT > Nearly God > Maxinquaye. PMT was more-or-less a blind buy (I'd read the hype for Maxinquaye but otherwise had only heard some of the tracks he'd produced) so it blew my brain all the way out of my ass.

You know, I'm positive I saw Tricky on the PMT tour, but I don't recall it being that visually impressive, let alone performed in near darkness. Vs., say, the Fever Ray tour that was performed in a dark, smoke-filled room with the group in bizarre costumes that you could barely make out in the murk. Now *that* was memorable. Here's a cool clip from what was probably the show I saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoXPuNj_gGA

Nearly God is a strange one for me, I think it’s the Tricky album I’ve heard the most. It’s probably his most consistent record and pretty much every song works for me, but at the same time it’s kind of a drab to listen to if you’re not in the mood for it. There’s a lot of 5/6+ minute songs and it’s more often than not like a an aural bad trip.

In low doses or if you’re in the mood for it, I think it contains some of his songs with the most replay value (poems in particular is imho a top 10 song of his) and it is interesting if only because it creates and explores what could have been a new sort of avant-garde path for trip-hop.

I don’t know if hearing it for the first time in 2020 changes the perception of it. Here’s that playing god tracklist I posted upthread: https://open.spotify.com/album/5NYiyNqu9Joe1qtgJN01w3?si=tv9uxJG0SdWx_XTC6cXs9g

Think of it a small sampler since it’s missing the Siouxsie cover and the Bjork tracks which are worth the listen. It’s under Nearly God not Tricky on spotify maybe that’s why you can’t find it in the US? The Ruff Guide / best of compilation has an edit of Poems, I Be The Prophet and Bubbles off of Nearly God.

love the trance rock of him live in the late 90s. The Shepherd's Bush performance which was broadcast on Channel 4 sometime back then is awesome. Tricky looking pretty much possessed at times.
want some more of that stuff.

His trance rock verges on krauty stuff in places. I like it muchly.

I like Nearly God a lot too.

I haven't really paid a lot of attention to Tricky post-PMT. I didn't like Angels With Dirty Faces much and I think I stopped after that. then Knowle West Boy got some good reviews and I checked that out at the time and liked it but apart from that I don't think I've heard anything.

(Hey CP I ilxmailed you so shout if that doesn’t work.).

Filling in some gaps. Loving PMT (esp 2nd half). Onto Nearly God.

Do report. I've been meaning to do the same.

Everything up to and including PMT seemed unimpeachable then came Angels with dirty faces and the DMX album

Nearly God's oppressive whispering sound is fairly prescient of the whole ASMR/electronic pop sound used today.

Not at all his best but Juxtapose has "For Real" and "Contradictive," which I'd include in any list of his best tracks.

I did go back and listen to PMT again and it's much better than I remember. The second half is still a bit puzzling, but in a way that makes me want to listen more. First half is on the level of Maxinquaye

I’m repeating myself but “Nearly God” has “Poems” which might just be the best track Tricky has ever made.

Yeah that's really great. It is a particular mood as you seem to be saying Moka (I'm appreciating it as the days get darker earlier). There is almost no drop-off from Maxinquaye at all on these records and I'm struggling to think of a British artist who put out this much great-to-good music in such a short period. Maybe Aphex when he was churning them out.

*in the 90s anyway..

This was a good review of his recently released autobiog..

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/10/so-this-is-the-aftermath

I'm ready to dive back in his previous albums too, on the back of the new one, which is great in an understated kind of way.

Ty for that link alphie.

Just found out about this sort of prose poem David Bowie wrote in 1995 for Q magazine about Tricky.

http://www.moon-palace.de/tricky/q95.html

Nearly God his must fully realized project imo

Apparently he has a full chapter of him and bowie in his book, I might need to buy it.

Apparently he has a full chapter of him and bowie in his book, I might need to buy and read that one.

have never once heard someone say "i'm loving PMT, especially the second half." haha. maybe i too should give it a relisten.

The first half of Angels With Dirty Faces is pretty good too, but boy, does that drop off. He really should've kept some of Maxinquaye back for the latter albums.

Started reading the book, it’s a pretty interesting read so far. Tricky comes off as a very tragic figure, starting right off with his mother’s suicide.

He comes off as unnecessarily feisty in some situations and also a bit of a narcissist, but he’s also pretty self-aware about his music and knows his discography is filled with dead ends and experimental failures.

I’m only 1/5 in but would definitely recommend for fans of Tricky and the music industry in the 90s.

Nearly God's oppressive whispering sound is fairly prescient of the whole ASMR/electronic pop sound used today.

Yes!

But I always think both Nearly God and PMT feel *remarkably* current, like insanely so. I remember a day around 2019 where I played nothing but those and Yves Tumor and it all connected.

coke in your nose

I’m repeating myself but “Nearly God” has “Poems” which might just be the best track Tricky has ever made.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 12:17 AM

otm

Both of those songs were remarkably top 30 hits here. Purely fanbase-driven sales but still, what clout.

PMT would have been my answer for the poll. One of my 100 favourite albums ever by anyone I think

Maxinquaye was kind of understated, but felt like an earthquake at the time, and Pre-Millennium Tension and Nearly God built on that sound. All of them are great albums