Words by Hannah Lanfear

By 1998, having released a triumvirate of deeply important albums, Massive Attack was a band that had the nation’s fervent approval. Each album was a masterpiece from start to finish and of desperate importance to the UK music scene. Like the rest of my generation, their first three albums were fundamental to my youth, each demanding to be heard attentively in entirety. Lying in the dark, stoned, their phonic, textural panoramas would drown away idle hours. These three records are the very pinnacle of what was Very Good about the ’90s.

The pressure cooker of intensive touring and the conflicts between them led to Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles being ousted from the band. And the tumult within the outfit didn’t end there – the next album barely featured Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall. Whether 1000 Windows was a purposeful move to shrug off the intensity of their former work, who knows, but this time around, 12 years on from what was arguably their career masterpiece, Mezzanine, the expectations were tentative. Can Massive Attack still be relevant?

Listening to Heligoland takes a few tries. At first, the album seems to lack the urgent climaxes of Mezzanine, or the loose and soulful funk of Blue Lines. But then, there’s never been any point in looking backwards with Massive Attack, they certainly seem intent not to; seemingly Heligoland has them in an apposite frame of mind. A few more listens and the album begins to reward, unfolding like a flower. The beauty is in the restraint, powerful, like the potent tension between ex lovers.

Their choices in guest vocalists are sublime. Perennial favourite Horace Andy gives a beguiling vocal on album highlight ‘Girl I Love You’, arguably the best of his lustrous career, over a surly and menacing bass line that evolves with a nasty rash of a beat underpinning a ferocious horn section that unravels into discordant disorder before returning with fervour to tie up the song.

Curiously, given the incest of the Bristolian music scene, Martina Topley Bird had managed to avoid the pull of Massive Attack’s gravity until now, but the results are more than just predictably good, with ‘Babel’ a fluid exercise in understatement.

Massive Attack have always had a rare and unsurpassed ability to spur a tender and personal vocals from their guest vocalists juxtaposed on impassionate beats, and this time around the choices don’t disappoint. The astute and bristling ‘Atlas Air’ gives the listener a tumultuous seven and a half minute sonic frisk with an iconic organ riff that is devastating in its reprise.

So, the dawn of a new decade brings with it the best of new beginnings; the return of Massive Attack to magnificent form: Heligoland (Virgin, 2010).