This girl I know needs some shelter - she don't believe anyone can help her

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

02/10/94 : Protection - Massive Attack

Our fourth visit with Massive Attack and I think this is my favourite album of theirs, despite most people either declaring Blue Lines or Mezzanine to be their masterpiece. It's also one we owned, giving us a pleasing three in a row and taking us to five for the year.

As you'd expect from a Massive Attack album there's a decent level of musicality throughout with some lovely bass whilst still maintaining a very clean sound (which is something that plenty of people don't manage). And then it all comes down to the guest vocalist that Massive Attack decided to get involved on each track - and we have three or four used on this album. Nicolette and Horace Andy both have interesting voices and do a decent enough job, but they're somewhat overshadowed by the other two artists called on here.

It's not entirely clear whether Tricky actually counts as a guest artist or was part of the group at this time but whichever it is, his voice really works well with this sound and really deepens the trip hop vibe - I think "Karmacoma" is one of the best dark trip-hop tracks out there (only rivalled by some of Tricky's solo stuff). Considerably less dark work is the excellent job that Tracey Thorn does on the title track and "Better Things" - I generally love her stuff (both solo and with EBTG) but I think these are two of her top tracks, with particularly smart lyrics on the latter 

You say that the magic's gone - well, I'm not a magician
You say the spark's gone - well get an electrician
And save your lie about needing to be free
Oh, that's bullshit, baby, you just want rid of me.

And, finally, to finish up we have to talk about the track that finishes the album up which is a most peculiar choice of covers, being a live version of The Doors "Light My Fire" - it's decent enough I guess but it does't really fit in with the rest of the album so I'm not sure what they were thinking. But overall, I think this is a very decent album with those Tracey Thorn tracks just elevating the whole thing beautifully. 

We're at #4 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a ten week run - and it certainly deserved better than that, so I'm pleased that, after a couple of weeks off, it came back for another 46 week run. And then, after a couple of months off, it came back for another 16 week run - and it managed another fourteen runs in the chart before it was last seen in '02, spending 127 weeks in the chart in total. The rest of the top five this week were R.E.M. (a new entry), a Cyndi Lauper best-of, a Luther Vandross cover album and Blur (which is quite the mix of genres) and the next highest new entry was a best-of from The Wonder Stuff (#9).

Wikipedia tells us that this is the second album and "like most of Massive Attack's albums, the music often defies categorisation". It was produced by Nellee Hooper who was very busy around this time - another famous name that pops up is Jonathan Glazer who directed the video for "Karmacoma". Critical reviews were generally very positive with 8/10 from NME and a stellar A- from our old mate Robert Christgau - commercially, it did something in a lot of places without ever really taking off, with #9 in New Zealand being the best it did away from these shores.

I did actually learn something useful from Wikipedia though - in '95, the dub producer DJ Mad Professor remixed the album and it was released as No Protection. Which obviously intrigued me so I checked it out - and I'm afraid it was just too dubby for me so I'll not be going back to it.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for £1.50, but if you want a mint condition first press vinyl copy it's going to set you back £300 - which is quite some amount of cash. Whether it's worth quite that much cash I wouldn't like to say, but I really like this album because it's another one that's very much of its time but hasn't dated over the years - and those Tracey tracks are just gorgeous.

25/09/94 - Could have been far worse
09/10/94 - Another very decent album