Music

Massive Attack

O2 Academy, Glasgow

Nicola Love

Four stars

MASSIVE ATTACK’S recent return to the live circuit highlighted that the road ahead is paved with new and exciting music. While the soft haunting vocals of Martina Topley-Bird and presence of Horace Andy in the trio’s talented touring arsenal were obvious, more familiar, highlights, tracks from upcoming EP Ritual Spirit were debuted in favour of some of the ‘hits’. This included Voodoo In My Blood, a collaboration with Edinburgh's own Young Fathers, whose opening set seemed less like a support slot and more like an extension of the show itself.

Meanwhile the band’s politically charged visuals, a collaboration with London-based collective United Visual Arts, felt as significant as the music itself as a blindingly bright screen backdrop beamed harrowing statistics and media headlines throughout the set. “This has been the worst crisis since World War II,” read text flashing up on the screen. “We must remember; we must act.”

However it was images by photojournalist Giles Duley that packed the most powerful, gut-wrenching punch. Duley’s photographs depicted the refugee crisis in the clearest, visually potent way possible and, as encore track Splitting the Atom ended and the stage emptied, those images are what brought the evening to its sobering conclusion. It would have been an unusual ending to any show except Massive Attack’s.

If the performance fell down at all, it was because parts of the set felt like a battle between band and crowd. In the moments when bass was not thundering through the floor, the volume of those onstage paled in comparison to a venue packed within an inch of its life. Massive Attack’s message was crystal clear and expertly executed but unfortunately forced to contend with a fickle, largely inattentive audience.