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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > March > 21 > Entry
SXSW Review: Tricky at Austin Music Hall
(Friday night, Austin Music Hall)
Oh, Tricky. What the heck was I thinking?
I blame myself, really. Your debut album, “Maxinquaye” is without question one of the best albums of the 1990s - dark, sexy, druggy, weird, smart beat-science and atmospherics, a sweaty, one-night stand of an album suffused with languorous menace. The follow-ups, the even-druggier “Nearly God” and the excellent follow-up “Pre-Millennium Tension,” were nearly as good.
Then the wheels kind of came off over the next few records and by the millennium we all moved on. Dude’s tried to come back a couple of times, but last year’s “Knowle West Boy” got OK reviews. Friday night at Austin Music Hall, maybe my man could deliver the show I’d always wanted to see.
Um, no.
“Rocking out” has never quite been one of Tricky’s skill sets, as much as he might like. At Austin Music Hall, he alternated between letting his backup singers do the work (the classic “Karma Coma” didn’t sound quite so classic here) and bellowing into the mic and jumping a round a bit. So the rocking was a little weak by default.
The other problem is his best music has always been deceptively detailed and that couldn’t have worked at the still-mostly-lousy sounding Austin Music Hall either. Most of the songs came off as early 90s industrial dance music - big beats, big sounds, not much else. Even classics such as “Karma Coma” were roughed up by the sound and presentation. The closer, “Vent,” a scary juggernaut on album, felt overlong at the show, straining under the effort to make it transcendent, Tricky, shirtless and wearing suspenders, doing his best ranting like a madman.
As one local musician put it on his Facebook status, “(I) did not know live music could be as bad as Tricky was tonight.” I wish I could say I disagreed. I really do.
Photo by Jay Janner
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: SXSW 2009, SXSW 2009 reviews: Day 3
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By nat
March 23, 2009 4:53 PM | Link to this
disagree - thought it was excellent, dark, interesting, powerful (vent especially) but too short a set supporting devo. his own fader show night before was the blast.