Massive Attack, O2 Arena, review: ambitious but dour and one dimensional
Massive Attack were one of the most significant British bands of the Nineties, a Bristol trio of producer-writers whose psychedelic adventures in trip hop opened up expansive new vistas of sound that still resonate throughout music today. They have always been determined modernists, almost curmudgeonly in their refusal to engage in crowd-pleasing commercial activity. So it was not exactly surprising that they warned audiences in advance not to expect to hear their greatest hits. But this attempt to sidestep nostalgia and comprehensively reinvent their dark, strange 1998 masterpiece, Mezzanine, for a 21st anniversary tour, somehow wound up feeling regressive rather than progressive.
They opened with a cover of dreamy guitar mantra I Found A Reason by The Velvet Underground. Massive Attack are smart enough to know the parallels they were evoking to a band whose combination of moody mantras, flashing lights and surrealist cine-montage visuals set templates for the darker side of art rock, krautrock, punk rock and industrial rock.
The trio (long since reduced to a duo, supplemented by a six-piece band and two guest vocalists) sampled the original Velvets track for Mezzanine’s Risingson. But shifting live into that shuddering weave of electronic and analogue assault, the effect was to reinforce links to pre-hip hop rock traditions that ultimately overshadowed the entire concert. It wasn’t just the footage of Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, Sarah Ferguson and Britney Spears that made me feel like I had seen it all before.
Eight shadowy figures, all dressed in black, barely visible in the noirish lighting, stirred up a sonic blizzard of noise and groove, shrieking electric guitars and shredding synthesisers powering mesmeric beats. Behind them, shrouded by darkness and dry ice, big screens relayed video montages of found footage featuring dancing figures, dead celebrities, birds in flight, soldiers in combat, a relentless jump cut mash up of sex, war and politics.
Messages flashed on screen as if the film-makers (Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and documentary director Adam Curtis) were afraid their thematic concepts might get lost in random visual juxtapositions. “BEHIND THE SCREEN THEY TOOK YOUR DATA AND TOLD YOU HOW TO VOTE”, “BREXIT MEANS BREXIT”, “YOU LIKED THAT, YOU WILL LOVE THIS”. In a packed O2 arena, heads bobbed in synchronised response to the rolling beats, as if 20,000 people were all nodding in agreement.
It was effective, at times shocking, and yet ultimately over-familiar. Such montages are routinely churned out by art school students. Anyone who has seen a Pink Floyd or U2 concert over the decades has seen this kind of thing done with much greater sophistication.
The sonic blitz was more akin to the industrial rage of Nine Inch Nails than the dubby style Massive Attack pioneered. In place of their own gorgeous hits, punky covers of Bauhaus (Bela Lugosi’s Dead), The Cure (10.15 Saturday Night) and Ultravox (Rockwrok) only added to a mood of oppressive onslaught. The resonant vibrato of reggae veteran Horace Andy brought a glimmer of joy on Man Next Door and Angel, while Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser helped bring proceedings to a graceful close on Teardrop and Group Four, the ethereal warmth of her trippily echoed vocals at odds with the rest of the concert.
This was an ambitious show. The sound was immense, the mood tautly sustained, the visuals sinuously integrated and, in a receptive mood, the combined effect could strike audience members very hard. But it was also dour, one dimensional and not half as clever as its creators seemed to think.
