The unexpected atmospherics provided by Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight featured as the soundtrack to Tricky’s arrival on stage. And although the song was cut short before its massive burst of drumming had kicked in, many in the audience could have applied the songs lyrics to their evening – “I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life”. Well, perhaps not all their lives, but it has been a very long time since Tricky’s last Australian tour, so it was no surprise to find that despite the hefty ticket price and the lesser quality of his more recent albums, the Prince Bandroom was packed out.
The age of the punters certainly suggested that Tricky’s fans have been around since his classic Maxinquaye and Massive Attack days – though he’ll pick up a few new fans with his Knowle Boy West return to form. Featuring a number of songs about his teenage life and the lives of kids growing up in dead-end British ‘burbs, it’s perhaps little surprise that he’s again producing work that approaches the quality of his older work. He’s looking back and revisiting not just the heights of his own early albums, but also paying tribute to the music he would have listened to when he was establishing himself in the days of Bristol’s ‘Wild Bunch’.
Sporting a cropped crown of short dreadlocks and bare-chested for most of the show, Tricky opened the set with the cover of The Cure’s Lovecats with his vocals slipping over those of Kira, his current female vocal foil. When she took the lead, Tricky turned his back on the audience hunching over and boxing in the shadows apparently conducting his band’s volume and tempo with his jabbing movements.
Council Estate saw Tricky throttling the mic stand to deliver his latest single with a ferocious passion. The lights rose, raising Tricky’s temper as he broke off his attack to berate the lighting desk to return the stage to near darkness, before he spat out his twitching rap with a vengeful spite – “they call you crime rate, they call you can’t go straight… just remember boy you’re a superstar”. The track comes off a bitter flipside to his Tricky Kid lyrics (“They used to call met Tricky-Kid/ I live the life they wish they did/… Now they call me superstar”).
Christian Sands provided an early highlight with the crowd eagerly lapping up the immediately recognisable cut from Pre-Millennium Tension. The standout opener of his new record, the seductively woozy Puppy Toy was followed by two covers – XTC’s Dear God and the eviscerating burn of Black Steel, which still blazed despite Kira falling short of Martina’s performance on record. Perhaps all too aware of the audience judging her against Martina, Kira’s turns on lead were slightly stilted and she appeared to be far more comfortable performing the newer material. However Tricky’s turns on the lead were undeniably gripping as he hurled himself about as though in battle with his mic stand or delivered his lyrics with his trademarked slurred mumble.
Switching between these two approaches the aggressive Girls was quickly followed by the bluesy personal history of School Gates, which shares a similar sound to the tracks on the recent Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell collaborations. Tricky’s gravelly voice brooded through the tale of his past relationships before the band offered yet another nostalgic moment, kicking into Overcome the lead track of his stunning 1995 debut. From the last track of his new album to the first of his debut it brought his performance full circle.
A brief encore climaxed with the paranoid aggression of Vent, and it was over. As with any performer with a long list of record there are inevitably a few tracks regrettably absent from the set – Money Greedy, Hell is Round the Corner and Tricky Kid – but Tricky is back and if he can keep delivering albums as impressive as his live show, he’ll be sticking round for some time yet.
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