Out of the studio roars a trip-hop beast

BY GLENN GAMBOA | Newsday Staff Writer

October 6, 2006

Grant Marshall performs with Massive Attack (Newsday/ Mitch Jacobson)

The albums of trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack are notoriously meticulous affairs, filled with whispered vocals, spare but forceful arrangements and a synthesized hush that often counters the dramatic tension in the lyrics.

That kind of precision is tough to re-create onstage, which may help explain why this is the band's first American tour in eight years, and for most of its 105-minute set, Massive Attack didn't even try. In fact, it went the opposite direction. It was, you know, massive.

The band's opener "False Flags" was nearly as thunderous as Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," with Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, leading the charge of a five-piece touring band that boasted two drummers. The final encore, "Group Four," was even bigger, building to a heavy-metal climax while Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser's gorgeous voice floated on top of it all. In that song, Massive Attack effortlessly captures the vocal-beauty-and-the-guitar-hero-beast conflict that Evanescence so achingly desires and clumsily performs these days.

Of course, Massive Attack knows all about crafting new styles and showing up hacks. The band built England's Bristol scene in the mid-'90s with Portishead and Tricky, who were branded as trip-hop for welding orchestral instrumentation to electronica rhythms and down-tempo singing and rapping.

The band was at full strength at Roseland Ballroom on Tuesday, which marked the tour's first appearance of Grant Marshall, aka Daddy G, who skipped the earlier shows to be with his newborn son.

"Hello, stranger," Del Naja said, as Marshall came onstage to deliver a fierce version of "Risingson," returning later to handle Tricky's duties on "Karmacoma."

Massive Attack has always been about the collective rather than the individuals, an ideal reinforced by the band's stage set where they are lit from behind and appear mostly as shadows. The band has operated with numerous singers and rappers in addition to Del Naja and Marshall, and this tour's rotating cast of collaborators Fraser, reggae singer Horace Andy and newcomer Deborah Miller helped make the band's songs seem larger than life.

Fraser made "Black Milk" sound slinky and seductive while keeping "Teardrop" dainty. Miller helped Del Naja make "Safe From Harm" into more of a dance-floor anthem, delivering the chorus of "You can free my world/You can free my mind/Just as long as my baby's safe from harm" with just the right mix of gospel and defiance. Andy and Miller teamed up for the grand sing-along "Hymn of the Big Wheel," from the band's breakthrough debut "Blue Lines."

However, it is Del Naja who best embodies the Massive Attack sound, whether he is shadowboxing to the skittering beats or commanding attention with powerful performances on the Radiohead-ish "Future Proof" or his political statements against the war in Iraq.

It's his fiery nature that makes it easy for Massive Attack to step out of the studio and onto the stage without missing a beat.

MASSIVE ATTACK. Trip-hop pioneers mount an aural and visual assault, with high-profile reinforcements. At Roseland Ballroom, Manhattan, Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday. Seen Tuesday.