776. Massive Attack - Protection (1994)

Track Listing

1. Protection
2. Karmacoma
3. Three
4. Weather Storm
5. Spying Glass
6. Better Things
7. Euro Child
8. Sly
9. Heat Miser
10. Light My Fire


Review

Trip-hop at its height was something else, it was probably my favourite music style from the mid nineties until about the end of the decade, but now, looking back it sounds very much of its time.

This dating is a lot more noticeable here than in Blue Lines, for example, it just has not stood up that well. There are of course good points to it, like Tricky's début or Tracey Thorn's contributions, but it often slips into elevator music instrumentals, which now sound particularly tacky.

I do not understand why this would be on the list instead of the more popular Mezzanine, but well this list has a lot of mysteries, we'll just put it up there with the slew of Morrissey albums. So yeah, don't really bother with this one.

Track Highlights

1. Karmacoma
2. Protection
3. Better Things
4. Euro Child

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Protection was featured in the top ten of Rolling Stone magazine's 'Coolest Albums of All Time List,' calling it "great music for when you're driving around a city at 4 am," due to the 'chill out' nature of the album. Like most of Massive Attack's albums, the music often defies quick categorization, ranging from R&B (title track, Sly) to hip hop/rap (Karmacoma, Eurochild) to reggae-tinged synthpop (Spying Glass) to classical-influenced electronica instrumentals (Weather Storm, Heat Miser). This album in particular has a heavy use of string instruments (or at least synthesizers imitating string instruments) compared to other Massive Attack albums, although certain tracks before and after have featured strings, like "Unfinished Sympathy" and "Live with Me".

Great video fro Karmacoma: