:: Record Review

Massive Attack

100th Window
(Virgin; 2003)

Rating: 75%
Combined Rating: 78%

Once again the argument begins:

“This album does nothing new.”

Ok. But when does reinventing the wheel become a prerequisite for making an enjoyable album? Sure, 100th Window may be the first album where Massive Attack don’t attempt to push their sound to new heights, but it isn’t exactly a huge step back either. A lot of people seemed to have the same problem with _Vespertine _and I find myself defending 100th Window in similar ways. The production is consistently intriguing and many of these songs—specifically “When The Soul Sings,” “Special Cases,” “Butterfly Caught,” “Everywhen,” and “Small Time Shot Away”—are beautifully arranged and, while far from previous highlights such as “Safe From Harm” or “Angel,” are still fine additions to a remarkably creative career. When you’ve made three albums as good as Blue Lines, Protection and Mezzanine, expectations are going to get unreasonably high.

“Yeah, but this is Massive Attack—they’ve created three Great albums over the past twelve years, launched one of the best genres of the ’90s and created not once, but twice, the album for teens to get blissfully high and/or have sex to. How can we not expect more, especially since it took them five years to create the follow-up?”

Fair enough. It’s certainly not another masterpiece or genre-defining/changing moment in music and certainly those that honestly expected 100th Window to have the same impact as Blue Lines twelve years later will be sorely disappointed. Then again, if you expect every album by every band you love to be absolute classics, you’re going to find yourself disappointed with much more than just_ 100th Window_. Del Naja obviously wasn’t trying to re-define trip-hop with this album; rather, to make a fairly safe album that inhabits some of its most appealing aspects. In many ways, he succeeds. Oh, and 100th Window is another fine installment in the respectable “albums to get blissfully high and/or have sex to.” They haven’t dropped the ball on that yet.

“Yeah, but the songs aren’t all there, man. The writing is weak.”

To an extent, yeah—but with Massive Attack, it has usually been the production and arrangement of the songs that really pulled me in. Though the songs were definitely stronger before, 100th Window nearly makes up for this with its uniformly great production and great vocal contributions by Horace Andy and Sinead O’Conner. Even Del Naja’s voice sounds better this time around. Many of my favorite moments on _Mezzanine _were the slower, darker songs that lulled you along in their beauty and this record obviously makes an attempt at extrapolating that over an entire album. It’s far from perfect, sure, but “weak?” I can think of few other acts that could even approach this type of consistency on an album like this.

“I don’t know, dude. I’m just saying…they’ve done so much better than this and I find it hard to set my standards lower to compensate for their obvious drop in quality. For every semi-interesting moment of this album there’s dozens more that remind me of stuff they’ve done before, and better, too. Instead of sounding endearing, it comes across as an annoyingly constant reminder that they’ve run out of good ideas and are trying to hide it with some sophisticated production. What’s the point in releasing an album that reminds your fans how much better you used to be? That’s just pointless.”

Bottom line: you can trash nearly any album for what it doesn’t achieve. It just seems awful petty to dismiss_ 100th Window_ completely because it isn’t on par with their past masterpieces. I wouldn’t call hate on the album backlash as much as most of us maintaining unreasonable expectations from an excellent band and, sure, you could argue they brought it on themselves, but they’ve (well, this one is nearly all Del Naja) also managed to release yet another excellent album with far more rewarding moments than boring and predictable ones. So, in the end, 100th Window is only as good as you want to perceive it; as the excellent album it is, or the thousands of things it isn’t.

“I don’t know, man. Say all you want, I just expected more from Massive Attack, you know?”

Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not taking sides.