Fall to Pieces

by 
AlbumSep 04 / 202011 songs, 28m 28s
Trip Hop
Popular

The most surprising thing about Tricky’s 14th album isn’t how dark it is (Tricky fans are used to the darkness by now), but how to the point. These are short songs, most under three minutes. And while his landmark albums had a dense, phantasmagoric quality, *Fall to Pieces* is clean and stripped down. The moods are still liminal: “Hate This Pain” sounds like someone murmuring through a nightmare, “Running Off” like someone trying to remember a strange old nursery rhyme. (His newest collaborator, vocalist Marta Złakowska, is perfect—eerie and innocent and seductive all at once.) But in the clarity of the sound lies a challenge: He might make the pain pretty (“I’m in the Doorway”) or even danceable (“Fall Please”), but he doesn’t let you settle into it. He’s always been a blues musician at heart, just visionary enough to avoid the blues per se. *Fall to Pieces* is his lonesome motel confession.

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7.6 / 10

After a string of misfires, the UK musician’s 14th album translates unimaginable loss into some of his most darkly moving music in years.

8 / 10

Fall To Pieces is Tricky's most vital work to date

In May last year, Tricky’s daughter died at the age of 24. “It feels like I’m in a world that doesn’t exist, knowing nothing will ever be the same again,” the Bristolian producer wrote on Facebook in the aftermath. “No words or text can really explain — my soul feels empty.”

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A year and a half after the death of his daughter Mazy, English electronic pioneer Tricky delivered his appropriately dark and dirgeful 14th album, Fall to Pieces.

7 / 10

Upon first listen, Tricky's 14th LP sounds like one of those mid-career back-to-basics affairs, rife with crackling low-end bass, looped pia...

8.5 / 10

Fall to Pieces, Tricky’s illustrious 14th full-length LP, serves as the legendary musician’s reckoning of sorts. Although he’s infamous for being enigmatic, the producer has been letting his guard down more and more recently.

7 / 10

“I think it… it’s gonna work now”, the lead vocalist Marta Złakowska remarks three seconds into Tricky’s latest album

Marta Zlakowska’s delicate guest vocals counter the producer’s darker impulses

5 / 10

It's been 25 years since Maxinquaye, the trip-hop classic that shook the world.

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Album Reviews: Tricky - Fall To Pieces

Moody vignettes transform pain into beauty. New Music review by Mark Kidel

6 / 10