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Tricky
“Juxtapose”
Island Records
Grade: B+
Until now, Tricky’s music could
best be described as claustrophobic.
His recorded output was the aural
equivalent of pent-up dread, uncer
tainty and heightened paranoia.
While his debut, “Maxinquaye,”
hinted at Tricky’s darker side, his next
two albums “Pre-Millennium
Tension” and the underrated “Angels
With Dirty Faces” burrowed deeply
into Tricky’s troubled mind. The
songs were difficult, directed inward
and demanded patience in listeners.
“Angels” also revealed Tricky’s
distrust of the business in which he
makes his living. Several songs on the
album were rants against record com
panies - particularly Island - and how
they sucked the creative life out of
their artists.
- While much of this was certainly
true, Tricky’s obsession bordered on
paranoia. In interviews, Tricky
blamed record companies for such
disparate events as Kurt Cobain’s sui- *
cide and the murders of Tupac Shakur
and The Notorious B.I.G.
And though his albums were fan
tastic, his claustrophobic sound had
already been taken as far as it could
go without sounding melodramatic or
worn out.
Tricky probably realized this,
because “Juxtapose” is his most con
cise and warm effort yet. The album
lacks die weight of Tricky’s previous
work, but it sounds like an interesting
new direction.
Tricky has been promoting this as
a hip-hop album, and it most assured
ly is. But it is hip hop unlike any heard
before.
Tricky, like Prince, creates a
hybrid of sounds that are wholly
unique. He creates music that is free
of reference points, alien and other.
Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs and
DMX’s producer Grease helped
Tricky produce the album, but it
sounds nothing like those high-pro
file rappers. The beats are light and
airy, and guitars play as much of a role
in the songs as the drum machine.
“Wash My Soul” even has a guitar riff
that wouldn’t have sounded out of
place on PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me.”
The songs work well together, and
the light beats, melodic bass, acoustic
guitars and weird synthesizer effects
are almost hypnotic.
However, a few of the songs nod
to hip-hop cliches, to the album’s
detriment. “Hot Like a Sauna” has a
Missy Elliott/Timbaland-style beat
and a pointless remix of the song
mars what is otherwise a cohesive
album.,
“I Like the Girls” takes a page
from the “bitches and hoes” school of
rap with a sexist rant about lesbian
prostitutes servicing guest rapper
Mad Dog. And Mad Dog’s rhyme
skills, which consist entirely of speed
rapping in a faux-Jamaican patois, are
fortunately on little of the album.
Long-time vocalist Martine
Topley-Bird is conspicuous in her
absence. Her wonderful voice was a
perfect complement to Tricky’s mum
bled speak-sing, and sound-alike
replacement D’Na’s voice is too thin
to make up for it.
Despite these gripes, Tricky has
made a surprising, interesting and
unusual album. May his career last as
long as Prince’s.
- Josh Krauter
Section of unfinished ‘Fruits’
to be published for first time
NEW YORK (AP) — In the sum
mer ofT850, Henry David Thoreau
was sharing a house with his parents
and wondering what to do. He had
completed his second book,-the now
classic “Walden,” but had no idea how
to follow it.
“I feel ripe for something, yet do
nothing,” he wrote in his joymal.
Having started a surveying busi
ness, he chose to ponder the “rich and
fertile mystery” of the wildlife around
Concord, Mass. He spent the last
decade of his life compiling data,
- apparently for a comprehensive natur
al history of Concord.
Now a section of that unfinished
project, “Wild Fruits,” will soon be
available for the first time, nearly 140
years after the author’s death. The
book is being published this fall by
WW Norton
“Prior to 1851, Thoreau was writ
ing about himself in nature,” said
Bradley Dean, the book’s editor. “With
‘Wild Fruits,’ he seems to be getting
out of the way. He writes about nature
itself.”
Dean also edited apother portion
of Thoreau’s project, “Faith in a Seed,”
which was published a few years ago.
Because Thoreau has long been
celebrated as one of the greatest
American thinkers and prose stylists,
it seems unthinkable that even frag
ments of Thoreau’s work took so long
to be published.
At its best, the writing in “Wild
^ Fruits” is clearly comparable to his
more famous books. And Thoreau.
remains highly influential among
writers and environmentalists.
“Thoreau is the most compelling
among classic American writers in
spelling out man’s relation to the envi
u
Prior to 1851, Thoreau was writing about
himself in nature. With ‘Wild Fruits,’he
seems to be getting out of the way.”
i ■ -
Bradley Dean
editor of Wild Fruits’
ronment,” said Dean, who has taught
at several universities and now works
at the Thoreau Institute in Lincoln,
Mass., less than a mile from Walden
Pond.
Thoreau was just 44 when he died
of tuberculosis in 1862, passing away
in the front parlor of his family home.
Shortly before his death, he had
wrapped the manuscript for “Wild
Fruits” in heavy paper, tied string
around it and placed it in a wooden
chest, where he kept thousands of
pages from other projects.
It took decades for his works to be
stored safely, in the New York Public
Library. By then, the wooden box had
vanished and the pages were scattered.
And even in mint condition, Thoreau’s
handwriting was virtually illegible.
“I started reading his manuscripts
back in the late 1970s,” Dean said. “I
was reading manuscripts of works that
had been published. I would come
across a word I didn’t know and com
pare it to the published text. You do
that a thousand times, and after a while
you become an expert.”
Much of “Wild Fruits” is a cata
logue of Thoreau’s observations. Each
plant or fruit has its own entry. He
offered poetic descriptions of the elm
tree (“we owe to it the first deepening
of the shadows in our streets”), the
dandelion (“that little seedy spherical
system”) and the strawberry (“better
call it by the Indian* name of heart
berry, for it is indeed a crimson
heart”).
A famous believer in'
Transcendentalism, which wor
shipped nature as divine, Thoreau
attacked commercialism, status-seek
ing and other forms of materialism. In
“Wild Fruits,” he cited the difference
between buying fruit and gathering it
yourself.
“It is a grand fact that you cannot
make the fairer fruits or parts of fruits
matter of commerce,” he wrote. “You
cannot buy the pleasure which it yields
to him who truly plucks it.”
Dean said additional papers
remain to be transcribed, including
“Moonlight,” a volume inspired by
Thoreau’s nighttime walks. Influenced
by the then-recent publication of
Charles Darwin’s writings, Thoreau
apparently was trying to apply the the
ory of natural selection to his own
work.
“He wanted to get his mind around _
the entire phenomenon of Concord,’”
Dean said. “He wanted to know it sci
entifically, historically, aesthetically.
He was trying to compile the natural
history of Concord, which nobody had
tried anything like before.”
Lax crowd mars Semisonic show
SEMISONIC from page 15
cert from a completely ill-fated State
Fair appearance was something that,
as the all-too-true cliche would have it,
came in a small package - time-wise,
anyway.
Matt Wilson, a former bandmate
of Dan Wilson and Munson in
Minneapolis art-rock orchestra Trip
Shakespeare, took the stage for a few
numbers with Semisonic. The high
light came when the brothers Wilson
sang backup to Munson on “Lulu,” a
song from Trip Shakespeare’s final
full-length album of the same name.
The song speaks true to exactly
how I feel about Semisonic’s former
(and better) incarnation. “Lulu” puts it
right: “Lonely when I hear the
band/That used to play when we were
looking for music/Lonely when I hear
the band/Do you remember? Do you
recall?”
' Unfortunately for listeners every
where, Matt Wilson is not a permanent
member of Semisonic, but this concert
provided a glimmer of hope that col
laboration between the two will fol
low.
Just that chance made Saturday’s
concert well worth it - even without
any Prince covers: