Chemicals captured in winter's grip

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

16/02/03 : 100th Window - Massive Attack


This is our third visit with Massive Attack and I quite like a lot of stuff they've done over the years, but I'm not sure I've ever listened to this - so I'm looking forward to it.

In a year when we've not had too many interesting albums, this has somewhat stood out for me - yeah, you've probably got to be into that trip-hop vibe to get into it, but I liked it. It's just got a nice moody feel to it, with some decent bleeps and vocals on it. They always do an excellent job in picking female vocalists to work with (Tracey Thorn's work on Protection is sublime) and here they've gone with Sinead O'Connor and her voice works so well, particularly on "What Your Soul Sings". I'm also going to call out the hidden track "LP4" for an impressive display of minimalism - there's very little to it, but it's nicely atmospheric. All in all, this isn't going to be for everyone - but it was very enjoyable for me.

We're at a rare (for this year) #1 with a new entry on the chart this week at the start of a ten week run which pleasingly features a drop in every week - this and Mezzanine are their only albums to make it to the top. The rest of the top five were Justin Timberlake, Kelly Rowland, Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne with the next highest new entry being Big Bruvaz (#25).

Wikipedia tells us this is their fourth album and it's not really a full Massive Attack album because only Robert Del Naja was involved from the core members of the group - it's also their first album not to use samples. Critical response was positive and commercially the album did waaaay better than I was expecting, getting to #1 in Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Poland and Switzerland - only #69 in the US though.

"Customers also listened to" Portishead, Hooverphonic, Sneaker Pimps and Morcheeba - I don't know Hooverphonic but the others have definite similarities. I really quite liked this - even more so within the context of the very average albums we've seen this year.

09/02/03 - Not a good album
23/02/03 - A surprisingly successful album

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