Heligoland is the fifth album by Bristol trip-hop legends Massive Attack. It’s certainly a step up from their last album, 2003’s slightly bland 100th Window, but they have also bypassed the pop quality of early albums such as the groundbreaking Blue Lines to create something more moody and darker. So although it is lacking catchy anthems, it still contains a pensive, increasingly intense atmosphere which, as proved on 1998’s masterpiece Mezzanine, is arguably what Massive Attack do best.
Opening track ‘Pray For Rain’, featuring vocals from TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, begins with looped drum rolls and brooding synths before building and building with tension, releasing into lush ambience and then reverting back to the atmospheric sense in which it began.
Long time collaborator Horace Andy appears on the outstanding ‘Girl I Love You’, his sweet vocals contrasting with a thudding, droning bassline and sinister brass section playing the song out. Martina Topley-Bird features on the synth heavy ’Psyche’ and Hope Sandoval on fantastic lead single ’Paradise Circus’. Elbow’s Guy Garvey puts in a darker than usual vocal on ’Flat On The Blade’ which perfectly adds to the paranoid feel of the song.
Finally Damon Albarn and Adrian Utley of Portishead feature on ‘Saturday Come Slow’ a track with a lamenting sadness to it which can’t help recalling the melancholy of Albarn’s work on The Good, The Bad and The Queen. All in all a fantastic return to form for the Bristol band.
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