Massive Attack
100th Window

The 100th window shattered into a thousand pieces. And not just it.

Here I am facing yet another semi-deception, speaking for myself of course, which is this 100th window, another album so eagerly awaited by the "group" that only a few years prior gave birth to that genuine masterpiece I consider "Mezzanine". Everyone back then was wondering: what would they have done "after" Mezzanine? What other horizons would they have opened up? Well, ladies and gentlemen, in my opinion, this album has not met expectations by quite a bit. The album develops along fairly deja-vu trip-hop lines without bringing the slightest novelty in terms of sound, arrangement, or structure, flattening on more than tested schemes (see "Future Proof" or the second "What Your Soul Sing" but we could go on for another 5/6 songs): For goodness' sake, we are always at very high levels in terms of class and refinement in the sounds, but... but NOTHING that gives me goosebumps, NOTHING that makes me jump up in my seat, NOTHING that comes even close to the previous work: all linear, all reasonably calm and, I repeat, already tested (of course the leader's voice in certain pieces, like "Everywhen" or that of S.Connors in "A Prayer For England" always give a slight shiver but it’s still very little). As if fundamentally lacking a certain underlying malaise, a certain emotional tension that the other works managed to convey.

In short, it seems more like an album by the book where they quote and retrace themselves in a formula that, so far, has brought them unprecedented success, but now, with this album, they risk going straight to the console of some "Afterhour" DJ or worse still, as the background of some trendy nightclub from 11 PM to 1 AM, before the rooms really fill up. Sure, the next album "Danny The Dog", will be decidedly better but the suspicion is that our Massive will hardly be able to surprise us again and that the slow and inexorable descending parabola has begun (see PRODIGY or FAT BOY SLIM).
Hope is the last to die, but you know... sooner or later it will be her turn too.
P.S. To hope, I give a 4, to the album a 2... the average is therefore 3.