CityLife

Tricky

INTENSE: Tricky

IT is fitting that, on the night when the ‘great’ and ‘good’ of British music (and a Dusty Springfield fan) gather at Earls Court for their annual bout of backslapping, the famously anti-establishment Tricky finds himself 181 miles away, playing an underground club gig for the NME awards, supposed alternative to the Brits.

Club Academy is a curious setting for a show by an artist whose recording history stretches back 14 years, but its darkened walls provide suitable surrounds for the Bristolian’s brooding music.

Beats seedier than a hippie’s loaf fill the room as he plays a selection of career-spanning cuts, including tracks from last year’s return-to-form LP ‘Knowle West Boy’.

Tricky’s penchant for anarchy drifts into his live show. Tonight, he doesn’t so much flout the smoking ban as set fire to it and launch it out to sea in a Viking-style burial.

Illicit puffing

His illicit puffing attracts the attention of venue staff, and a minor tussle ensues as one mounts the stage to insist he stop (“sorry, I thought security wanted to do a song,” quips the singer).

The incident sets the tone for the rest of the show. Subsequent numbers are played out with a confrontational tenor and thick air of menace.

Tracks such as ‘Council Estate’ are given extra kick, snarling and biting like a Rottweiler chewing on a small colony of fire ants, while ‘Veronica’ grinds with grudge-bearing anger and intensity.

Tricky’s music holds a beguiling appeal and tonight’s crowd is a mixture of inquisitive students, trip-hop veterans and dreadlocked Chorlton-types, who lose themselves among the carefully orchestrated sound.

His mastery of the loud bit/quiet bit dynamic cannot be faulted, although his overuse of it perhaps can.

By the 300th ‘surprise’ crescendo, the trick – along with the audience – feels somewhat tired.