Tricky may not have released an album in six years, but he has kept busy; Theis Thaws and Lonely Guest are just two aliases the trip-hop innovator has used to record new music. But, as press-release legend has it, when Tricky’s manager, Alan McGee, heard the bones of the tracks that would become Different When It’s Silent, he saw a rose by any other name. “In my mind it was another side project,” Tricky said. McGee countered: “Mate, this is a Tricky album.” His 15th studio effort reconfigures blues, hip-hop, punk, and electro into a stark, collagist sound that emphasizes those genre’s similarities while highlighting their contrasts. This is the Tricky sound, canonized.
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Lenny Kaye: Goin’ Local [Yep Roc]
You’re never too old to start fresh—just ask Patti Smith Group’s Lenny Kaye who, at 79, is releasing his debut solo album. Goin’ Local arrives a few years after the release of Kaye’s memoir, Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll, and includes contributions from jazz pianist Matthew Shipp, Railroad Earth’s Tim Carbone, the Jayhawks’ John Jackson, and David Mansfield. “I’ve always loved the local, its intimacy and camaraderie,” Kaye said in a press release. “I feel that the truest ‘Goin’ Local’ is the privilege to go inside my own head and hear how I sound to me.” Still, old friends are gold friends, and Smith does have a co-write here, on the song “Solstice.”
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