"The greatest English group of the last ten years", bleated an unusually submissive NME a few weeks ago, but looking at the myths and legends that have sprung up around this Bristol dance collective - not to mention the acres of colour supplement coverage their recent return has garnered - it’s hard to not believe the hype. They invented trip-hop, kick-started the careers of Portishead, Tricky, Nicolette and Shara Nelson, found sympathetic new settings for old lags like Horace Andy, Tracey Thorn and Liz Fraser and launched a record label, in between fashioning two albums’ worth of material that have already become staples of just about every top 100 albums chart constructed since about 1995. (Except our own, tragically!) The sole area that remained unconquered was the live performance, save for a few undernourished DAT and decks shows around the time of "Protection". So, which way would their twice-postponed tour tip the balance?
First up, meet Alpha, a six-piece signed to the Massive’s Melankolic imprint who fashion Portishead-and-the-kitchen-sink trip-hop (what else?) swamped with cheesy-listening artificial orchestration. For much of their brief set they’re accompanied by a female singer, save for the last song when a dead ringer for the blonde Chemical Brother (Tom or Ed? I never can tell) takes the mic, and winds the Apollo into a crashing frenzy of metallic dub. My mate Jon, who’s liked them for ages, thought them superb because they make exactly the same kind of music that he wants to; I’d say they were more interesting than good, but respect due for making the effort.
The question exercising the minds of the faithful during the interval was, "Who’ll turn up?". True to their sound system roots, the Massive have made a virtue of employing guest vocalists and rappers, at least half-a-dozen having slipped through their ranks since they formed ten years ago. Hardly expecting some quirk of scheduling to gather Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, Liz Fraser and Tricky under the same roof at the same time, tonight the Massive featured the ever-present triumvirate of 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G, as well as long-time companion Horace Andy ("The number one reggae singer", as Daddy G introduced him at one point) and new bug Deborah Miller, along with a small but hardcore band of anonymous muso types.
And so they swing into "Angel", the opening track of their third album "Mezzanine" (released, with audience-baiting incompetence, barely twelve hours earlier), a huge, industrial-strength amalgam of dub roots and metal polish, with a sprinkling of lines for Horace (dressed in what looked from our vantage point to be a khaki tracksuit) to croon threateningly through. Next up there’s 3D and Daddy G trading lines through last year’s single "Risingson", and then one of the evening’s many highlights, their spaced deconstruction of John Holt’s "Man Next Door", throughout which Andy ranges around the stage like an animal testing the limits of its tether. Even better is "Spying Glass", where the melody builds and builds to a jaw-dropping intensity: you can feel the tension.
A Liz Fraser-less "Teardrops" doesn’t work, and Horace Andy’s good-vibes interludes woven into Daddy G’s rendition of "Euroman" sap the air of menace and foreboding that Tricky managed to achieve on the album version. But, aside from the fact that they didn’t play "Protection" and the Apollo’s dreadful, boomtastic acoustics, is the sum total of the evening’s caveats. More goodies: a euphoric float through "Hymn Of The Big Wheel", a seminal "Safe From Harm" that turns into a throbbing, stroboscopic rock monster, and a rendition of "Heat Miser" with Daddy G and Horace making bizarre sucking noises over 3D’s paranoid mumblings.
As is traditional, the best was saved for last. Yes, they did play "Unfinished Sympathy", and Deborah Miller, who’d been sounding a little lost amidst the sturm und drang of the "Mezzanine" material finally gets her lungs around a song that benefits from a dollop of good, old-fashioned diva belting. The rapturous audience applause at the end of each verse summed it up, pretty much. The vocal samples from the album version may have gone AWOL, and the thin synth strings were no match for the original’s heartbreaking orchestration, but this was music!
No band on earth could top that, but when the Massive have a go we were inevitably disappointed, especially when they stumbled into one of the as-yet-unheard songs located towards the end of the new album which we later worked out to be "Group 4". But, strangely, it gradually metamorphosed into a leather-clad heavy metal dub monster, half "Metallica" and half "King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown", wave upon wave of sound building and building, becoming more intense as they locked into a frightening, wired riff undeterred by the sound of a few thousand jaws hitting the (sticky) floor...because, although nobody in their right mind would have asked them to, Massive Attack can actually rock. It’s a shocking revelation, a bit like expecting Portishead to cover the odd early Sabbath tune, but one that begins to make some kind of hazy sense when you take into account the reappraisal of their punk root that froths around the more uncompromising, darker corners of the new album. This seems to go on for, oh, weeks, before a sudden tornado of bass sweeps them away.
So that’s what Massive Attack think a concert should be in 1998. A sprinkling of classic songs given even greater novelty value by the way the audience can see (or think they can see) the way they’re assembled before our very eyes, a handful of tunes that will probably be regarded as classics by the end of the year, and a hefty confounding of prejudices and expectations. The greatest English group of the next ten years? Is there really anyone to challenge them?