Tricky - Knowle West Boy

  by Sarah Maybank

published: 6 / 7 / 2008

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Review

Time to ditch that semi-ironic bottle of Pimm’s and tear your gaze away from those half-naked lovelies sunbathing in the park. Everyone else might be hip hip hooraying that in June 2008, our rain-blighted country managed more than two consecutive days of sunshine (most of Glastonbury and half of Wimbledon dry as a bone? Unthinkable). But if it’s a real quality time you’re after, get involved with Tricky, the Grinch who stole summer. And he’s more than welcome to it – we’ve been given a fair swap. ‘Knowle West Boy’ is what you get if you subdivide a dark night of the soul into 13 densely individualistic chunks, stud them with beats, guild half of them with sweet lady-vocals and let the rest fester under your slithering, raspy wordplay. Sauntering from genre to genre, it’s an after-dark album you’ll want to play 24/7. And it succeeds effortlessly whether it’s nodding to bar room blues (‘Puppy Toy’), firing out a densely layered punk rant (‘Council Estate’), swallow diving into strings-drenched cinematic soundscapes (‘Past Mistake’) or unleashing a cover of Kylie’s ‘Slow’ so sleazily seductive, the CPS’ll probably invent an offence that it can be locked up for. Don’t bother resisting, just draw your curtains on the world, sunshine or no sunshine, and devote yourself solely to wallowing in its pulsing creativity. "I don’t think I’m talented", announced Tricky matter of factly in a recent interview. "There’s no magic trick to this." Excuse the record buying public while they beg to differ.

Track Listing:-

1 Puppy Toy
2 Bacative
3 Joseph
4 Veronika
5 C'Mon Baby
6 Council Estate
7 Past Mistake
8 Coalition
9 Cross To Bear
10 Slow
11 Baligaga
12 Far Away
13 School Gates

Label Links:-

http://www.dominorecordco.com/
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https://twitter.com/DominoRecordCo
https://www.youtube.com/user/DominoRec
https://plus.google.com/+DominoRecords