Album of the week: Tricky – 'Different When It’s Silent'

Talking to me earlier this year, Tricky explained the thinking behind the title of his new album.

“I was doing a photo shoot for Acne, the Swedish clothing company,” he began. “And when we were doing photos, everybody was talking. There was about 10 people in the room. I was smoking a spliff and that, and they were totally cool with me.

“Then we had to film. So everybody had to be quiet. And the atmosphere just changed. And I just said: ‘Oh, it's different when it's silent.’ My late manager, Nigel Templeman, was there. And I said: ‘You know what? That's a great name for an album.’ And Nigel wrote it down in his phone. That's why the album is called that.”

It is, then, a nod to his late manager and their work together, “because he was there and he was enthusiastic. It was a moment.”

There are moments like that – powerful, moving, devastating, uplifting – all over this record, and it’s all the more brilliant and impactful for it. His 15^th album overall, it’s the first Tricky has released under his own name in six years, the last being Fall to Pieces. Since then, the artist born Adrian Thaws has purposefully avoided leading with his name, releasing music as Lonely Guest, Theis Thaws and in collaboration with Polish singer Marta Złakowska, who goes by Marta and is signed to his label False Idols.

The reason for that blurring, that avoiding of having to front a project, was the sudden death in 2019 of his daughter. He managed to make Fall to Pieces, “but I was in pieces when I made that album. I had to get that out of me.” Now, though, he’s stepping into the light, alchemising the darkest of feelings into a sense of life continuing, with purpose and passion, against the odds. The result: his best album since his groundbreaking debut album, 1995’s Maxinquaye.

Here are songs of love and loss and hope. The aching, sparse blues of the opening ‘I Still See Me There’, Tricky whispering in the shadows (“don’t leave me here”) while Mitch Sanders, the young fellow Bristolian who appears on many of these tracks, sings in a keening falsetto. The jagged riffs and jagged anger of ‘I’m Yours’. ‘Be Still in the Pain’, all sinuous hip hop-soul, Sanders’ remarkable, swooping voice weaving in and out of bassy raps from another Bristolian associate, Run Red Rambo. ‘I Tried’, a tight, concise, two minutes-and-15 seconds that evokes the masterclass in production that was Maxinquaye and its fellow mid-Nineties exemplars of “the Bristol sound”.

Tricky - I'm Yours (feat. Mitch Sanders) [Official Video] - YouTube

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Touring Different When It’s Silent in spring, Tricky and Sanders performed on barely lit stages, a (lack of) lighting choice in keeping with the heavier themes and intensity of emotion of Tricky’s new songs. But on the album that doesn’t come off as claustrophobic. And that’s testament to the songcraft and melodicism on display here, both Tricky’s and Sanders’.

A 27-year-old singer-songwriter signed to Island, he’s clearly a fantastic foil and creative sparring partner for Tricky. Having worked with myriad female vocalists over the years, this is “the first time I've ever done a full album with a male singer,” Tricky pointed out to me. It’s a great hook-up, with Sanders supplying, as well as multiple killer vocal performances, ‘Paris Maybe’, an unashamed pop song, albeit filtered through Tricky’s ice-cool, Joy Division-go-electronic production.

It isn’t quite a full album featuring entirely male vocals. Marta appears on the closing 'Out of Place', a punky, hammering song of release in which co-vocalist Tricky tells it like it is: “I sing for my daughter”. A testament of everlasting love, helping spark to life an album that’s a true, defiant triumph.