I’ll Take On Any Man Here

Massive Attack Protection, or how do you follow-up near perfection?*

After rewiring my brain with Blue Lines Massive Attack broke the one golden rule I had learned about music** and released a great-but-not-quite-as-great LP. It had brilliant songs, emotion, a definable mood, innovation, warmth, sadness and a totally shit last track; what more could you want?

---

The title track is just incredible. I struggle to think of a better expression or summation of love in art^ than that conjured up by Tracey Thorn here. In her excellent autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen, she writes about receiving a tape with the slowest music she had ever heard on it and wondering what on earth to do with it. After a few days she wrote the lyrics in one go drawing on a story about a girl and her husband’s illness.

You're a boy and I'm a girl
But you know you can lean on me
And I don't have no fear
I'll take on any man here
Who says that's not the way it should be?
And I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow, protection
I stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow, protection

There is something beautiful and frondlike about how ‘Protection’ unravels and reveals itself to your ears. Oddly for a song with such a massive attack there is something really unassuming about it, Thorn’s vocal being the most assertive thing about it. Masterful stuff.

The stoned lopsided Eastern/Bristolian swagger of ‘Karmacoma’ is another great track and my favourite vocal performance from Tricky, period^^. The mood shifts again on the head of pin for ‘Three’ which sounds like very little else I’ve ever heard, Nicolette’s vocals gliding above the thrum and pulse of the backing track to great affect.

After that the instrumental ‘Weather Storm’ cuts through clear and beautiful, Craig Armstrong’s piano is just perfection – effectively doing exactly what Nicolette’s voice did on the previous cut. Then Protection brings out the reggae flavouring for the fug and paranoia of ‘Spying Glass’, I could very happily listen to Horace Andy singing the instruction manual for an air fryer. I love how dancey the backing track is its urgency curled around Andy’s vocal.

The James Brown sampling ‘Better Things’^* is next, another collab with Tracey Thorn, with Ben Watt also providing guitar. The heavy dub bassline works so well again with her lonely, optimistic vocal it is aural Prozac for me. It sounds especially good next to the dense ‘Eurochild’ with its’ slightly mournful council estate Bond theme vibes.

Nicolette is back for ‘Sly’ with those uniquely curly tones she brings to proceedings, Craig Armstrong’s swelling endow it with a definite soundtrack feeling. His piano is back for ‘Heat Miser’ a dense, heavy breathing paranoia which samples a moment of Isaac Hayes to great affect, again Massive Attack go widescreen and filmic here.

In any sane world ‘Heat Miser’ would end Protection. It doesn’t, so we’ll leave my track by track right there because I am a nothing if not a positive chap.

---

I really like how Massive Attack broadened and changed their sound on Protection, more trip hop than hip hop, all those broad filmic themes allied to that trip hop groove was a potent mix. All credit to producer Nellee Hooper.

I have always been so impressed by how well Massive Attack used the vocalists they gathered into their world, allowing them to really flourish and express themselves, confident in the strength and unifying elements of the music

I am especially enamoured by the way the cover art embodies this – the cover of Blue Lines burnt away to show the rough, metallic wall of Protection. I have owned this LP for 27 years and I never actually realised this until now, ah well.

I used to wonder what Massive attack would do after Protection, probably play it safe and fade into obscurity I thought …

1223 Down.

PS: Delayed until now, so as not to harsh the vibe. Chill song, video? not so much.

*with near perfection would seem to be the answer.

**that the first LP a band release after you’ve got into them belatedly is the worst one they will EVER make e.g. Blow Up Your Video, Raise Your Fist And Yell, Tonight, You’re Under arrest, Ram It Down.

^only ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’ by a certain band of Aussies runs it close. Oh and probably some of Neruda’s sonnets and an Italian arty film, or something.

^^I’ve never quite forgiven him for what he did to ‘Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’ on his solo debut.

^*’Protection’ also sampled James Brown too, uncredited weirdly enough in these litigious times.

That Tricky second LP, eh? or that second LP featuring Tricky?