24th September 2006 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, USA

False Flags/Rising Son/Black Milk/Man Next Door/Butterfly Caught/Hymn of the Big Wheel/Mezzanine/Teardrop/Angel/Future Proof/Safe From Harm/Inertia Creeps/Unfinished Sympathy/Group Four

photograph by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

Not quite the full Attack
Something is missing from Massive Attack's Hollywood Bowl debut.
Why, you may wonder, would I review Massive Attack again no more than five months since its appearance at this year's Coachella festival?
After all, the shadowy English group is neither a chart-burning phenomenon nor a beloved touring attraction apt to turn in radically different performances night after night. And though the Bristol-based Attack was groundbreaking in the '90s, due credit for more than just spawning dozens of trip-hop imitators, the influence of its innovative, brooding sound hasn't exactly reverberated loudly this decade.
To which I say, "So what?" There were still three compelling reasons to check out the troupe's Hollywood Bowl debut Sunday night:
1) You never know when Massive Attack will return. Before Coachella, where a new production unlike any the outfit had attempted was unveiled, it had been eight years since the band had come to Southern California, when it played the Hollywood Palladium while promoting its aesthetic-intensifying third album, "Mezzanine." It could be another eight years before it comes back. Fans, then, are wise to take in as many sightings as they can.
2) You never know when Massive Attack will simply stop. Its core was fractured years ago, when Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles split after growing disenchanted with the heavily churned, less hip-hop-directed feel of "Mezzanine." That left Robert "3D" Del Naja and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall to steer the ship, with Del Naja's ominous soundscapes and stingingly politicized lyrics becoming paramount.
Sunday night, however, Marshall was on paternity leave; his wife just had a baby boy, Sonny. His working relationship with Del Naja is presumably sturdy, but how long before family and other personal issues make the prospect of carrying on as Massive Attack less crucial?
Then there's the question of how potent the group can remain on stage. True, it could always pull a Prodigy, ditch any live-band elements and become a more straight-up dance attraction. But Massive Attack has built a reputation out of presenting its deeply sensual apocalyptic rock as enormously as possible.
Thus the parade of guest stars, from reggae legend Horace Andy (a regular touring Attacker) to cameos from angelic-voiced Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins. Thus the hypnotic light display that left Del Naja and his supporting players shrouded in darkness. And thus the pop-propagandistic statistics that scrawled across the group's visual display during powerful anti-war statements attached to songs both old ("Safe From Harm," "Inertia Creeps") and new, like the unnamed and unfamiliar (to me) opener denouncing both U.S. and U.K. involvement in Iraq. (Just something to "break the ice," Del Naja noted dryly, later pointing out how privileged he felt to be at the Bowl and singing about the world's ills.)
All of it added up to a gripping (if sometimes also lulling) experience, all the more rare because of the setting. In the past, at other venues, fans have had to stand through each Attack; here, for the first time, we could sit back and savor the spectacle.
But that observational vantage point also amplified certain festering weaknesses – and made the sameness of some of the group's lesser material border on dull after a while. How splendid it was to hear Deborah Miller wailing again on "Unfinished Sympathy." How plainly evident it was during "Teardrop" that Fraser's gorgeous tone is fading with age, better suited to studio emphasis.
In all, a stirring encounter that nonetheless wasn't as fully powerful an Attack as those glimpsed at Coachella or earlier. It was the first one, in fact, that left room for doubt among the dazzle.
Yet there's that third reason for having attended:
3) TV on the Radio opened.
The offbeat Brooklyn quintet – fronted by charismatic, sometimes flailing vocalist Tunde Adebimpe, who is capable of working himself into a madman's frenzy – is a critical favorite with one of the more striking albums this year, the atmospheric "Return to Cookie Mountain."
Live, TVOTR still leaves something to be desired, despite Adebimpe's seizing manner, the group's intuitive interplay and soul-punk approach (notably on new cuts "Dirtywhirl" and "Province"), or the addition of a horn section. On stage the band is still consumed by Sonic Youth-y guitar noise – which would be fine if it were the only weapon in its arsenal.
To hear the band on record, however, is to hear it maximizing its potential, experimenting with sounds and structures it simply can't re-create in person.
But seeing as their fellow Brooklynites in Gang Gang Dance didn't fare any better at achieving a spacier tone, perhaps that's just how these new New York creatures are evolving – sonically split in two
by Ben Wener http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/entertainment/music/concertreviews/article_1287293.php

Massive Attack's involving presence
A show at the Bowl is dynamic, never mind that one principal is absent and supporting players and cohorts carry much of the load.
An odd thing happened with the third song of Massive Attack's concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday. None of the people performing at that point were actually members of Massive Attack.
With Elizabeth Fraser, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, coming on stage to sing "Black Melt" (and quite beautifully at that), the only actual Massive Attacker on the current tour, Robert Del Naja, sat on the front of the drum riser and, well, sat.
raser was then backed by just five supporting musicians, as was Horace Andy on the next song, "Man Next Door." In fact, for about half the show, Del Naja — whose partner, Daddy G, is back in England on paternity leave — had no active role, as Fraser, Andy and/or Deborah Miller handled the vocals. (Fraser and Jamaican-born Andy are veteran Massive cohorts, while Miller is a new find.)
On paper it might sound perilously like "The Massive Attack Revue."
On stage it was a remarkably dynamic and involving 100 minutes that truly lived up to the creative standards that have been associated with the name Massive Attack.
Since emerging in the mid-'90s, M.A. pretty much has rewritten the rules as to what exactly a band is, the studio denizens enlisting various singers to craft emotionally rich, aurally seductive tracks. Along with fellow Bristol lights Portishead and Tricky, collectively lumped as leaders of the misnamed "trip-hop" movement, they reinvented pop forms without adhering blindly to the techno conventions that dominated their environs. The best Massive recordings remain breathtakingly inventive.
So now, with a full-band tour, Massive is taking on concert conventions, and once again rewriting the rules. At times Sunday's performance called to mind such super-achievers as Radiohead and Peter Gabriel and a few other top names of art-pop — the opening "False Flags" fell just a David Gilmour guitar solo shy of sounding like a great lost Pink Floyd epic, yet never seemed derivative.
It was a perfect transition from the second-billed set by Brooklyn's TV on the Radio, the acclaimed, accomplished quintet that with two albums now has refined a sound that filters its own art-rock influences (notably David Bowie circa "Heroes" and the earthier side of Sonic Youth) through an intriguing blues-based reduction. The problem with the group is a sense of coldness that radiates from the music, though less so Sunday at the Bowl than on recordings, in large part due to singer Tunde Adebimpe's personable ways.
There's nothing wrong with an anti-pop stance, but would it kill these guys to write a memorable chorus? It's not like they're playing free jazz or Persian taqsims or anything so far off the mainstream map. That lack (as well as being cut off at the start of what was to be the final song of the set due to the Bowl's tight timetable, just as a real sense of momentum was being built) undermined the still-interesting performance, spiked by well-woven lyrics blurring the lines between personal and political passions.
No such problem for Massive Attack. While the lyrics are generally impressionistic, Times Square-like message light scrolls were used pointedly to add sociopolitical layers, such as the statistics of Iraq war casualties and costs that ran by as Miller and Del Naja sang the simmering-yet-hopeful climax "Safe From Harm."
But the impact came from the whole package. When out front, Del Naja danced and shadowboxed between lines sung with his sharp-edged voice, a spotlight-worthy frontman — that is, if there had been a spotlight. The stage was lighted almost entirely by a bright bank of color-shifting lights behind the performers, leaving them in semianonymous silhouette. The band brought full life to the music without ever merely copying the recorded versions. The intro-to-launch build-up of "Angel" seemed ready to break free of gravity itself. Beats were somehow at once fluid and rock solid, tones ranged seamlessly from delicate and brittle to powerfully, uh, massive.
By Steve Hochman http://www.calendarlive.com/music/pop/cl-et-massive26sep26,0,6711147.story

Trip-hop pioneers conquer with dissident tones and astral ambiance.
For all the musical brimstone sparked by Massive Attack on the Hollywood Bowl stage Sunday night, it was unfortunate that it took an indictment of the war in Iraq to solicit a truly noteworthy response from the near-capacity crowd. The comments came as an introduction to the outfit's early breakthrough "Safe From Harm," which surely contributed to the applause, but one couldn't help but feel that the night's near-brilliant pacing was lost on much of the Hollywood audience.
The backlit stage was set in shadows for most of the 100-minute set, blurring the individuals and enhancing the spastic lights that streaked behind Massive mastermind Robert Del Naja, an additional trio of vocalists, guitarist Angelo Bruschini and a quartet of accompanying musicians. The bleak visual anonymity of the artists furthered the flashes of color that played the perfect accompaniment to the ambient rhythms and sonic serendipity that ebbed and flowed from the stage.
The proceedings unraveled like accidental genius, as the Bowl was transformed into a musical oasis of tonal abandonment. The trip-hop pioneers don't have the smoothest dance soundtrack, but that didn't stop a handful of the jet-setting crowd from giving it their best effort. It wasn't always pretty, but the music wasn't always intended to be.
Opener "False Flags" set the night into motion as smoke filled the stage and orange lights simulated flames that danced in the background. As was the case throughout the night, it was as much about the sonic build-up and release as it was about a sustained songwriting core.
Absent from the Los Angeles show was Del Naja's creative partner, Grant Marshall, who returned home to be with his wife for the birth of their baby. Remarkably, his presence was hardly missed. Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser contributed operatic vocals that ran the gamut from angelic to haunting; the trippy beats of "Black Melt" offered a corrugated patchwork that her lyrics floated above effortlessly, and the soft strains of Brushcini's guitars provided a perfect backdrop for the supple incantations that layered "Teardrop." Reggae legend Horace Andy offered his own distinct color and pitch to "Man Next Door" and the guitar-driven, heavy bend of "Angel," and Deborah Miller let loose with a decidedly R&B flair on the percussion-driven "Hymn of the Big Wheel" and the crowd favorite "Unfinished Symphony."
The show was a steady build, but as the sounds emanating from the stage got heavier and heavier throughout the night, so did the crowd's response, climbing from polite and virtually nonexistent early on to an energetic apex during the encore opener "Inertia Creeps" and into the riveting, metallic whirlwind of the closer "Group Four."
By Paul Gargano http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003157031