Massive Attack Splitting the Atom (Virgin)
3/5
By: Stephen Maughan
What can one say about a band who recently won the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the Ivor Novello Awards? The fact they are good no longer bares mention, it’s more the question of how good each individual release is.
Well, Splitting the Atom is no Unfinished Sympathy. Far from it, it is their first material for three years and is a teaser from their new album due next years. For a band going for almost 20 years they can also afford to include a couple of decent mixes from older albums.
'Pray for Rain', which features Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio, is perhaps the most interesting track here, but too often the repetitive beats and overworked poetry feel a little bit, well, dated. Bringing in Guy Garvery from Elbow on the weakest track, ‘Bulletproof Love’, is a wasted affair, while the title track itself slowly builds itself up from a familiar repetitive beat to the fifth minute where you think things are about to get interesting but then ten seconds later it's all over.
Still, I'm giving this 3 stars, for it's a pretty good effort., but will ultimately disappoint Massive Attack fans. For the rest of you, if you are short of cash this month, go and buy 1991's amazing Blue Lines instead, if you ain’t got that... Splitting the Atom is interesting enough, but doesn't really go anywhere or get your heart beat up.
Artists in this article: Massive Attack
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