Seven years have passed between the recording of trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack’s new album, Heligoland, and their previous studio album 100^th Window.  While the band hasn’t exactly been on hiatus in that time – there have been soundtracks, a greatest hits album, singles and shows – it is clear that the time away from a concerted creative effort has taken its toll.

Specifically, there are two impressions that the listener takes away from Heligoland.  The first is that Massive Attack have strayed from the cohesiveness of expression found on past works and instead have chosen to embrace the unpredictable fruit that is borne when working mostly with outside collaborators.  While several of the vocalists who contributed to Heligoland are familiar faces, such as Horace Andy, a full eight of the album’s 10 tracks feature the talents of artists outside of the band.

The second and perhaps more pervasive sentiment associated with Heligoland is that Massive Attack’s prolific soundtrack composition has heavily influenced its songwriting direction.  The majority of the tracks on the album feature the type of subdued, ethereal backing sound that is characteristic of a film score.  While Massive Attack have rarely gone for bombastic, in-your-face arrangements in the past, Heligoland’s tunes are lacking the drama and sense of purpose found on albums such as Mezzanine or even the earlier work of Protection.  Several tracks, such as Babel featuring Hope Sandoval (formerly of Mazzy Star) or Psyche fail to establish enough of a lead for listeners to latch on to, leaving fans to conjure up their own story lines to accompany the album’s aural soundscapes.  Likewise, Flat of the Blade starts out promising, but it fails to deliver on its early intrigue.

There are, of course, exceptions to the general Heligoland feel.  In fact, simply raising the volume imbues the opening track ‘Pray For Rain’ with far more presence than it at first appears to offer the listener.          Saturday Come Slow, which features the talents of Blur frontman Damon Albarn, is perhaps the catchiest and most engaging effort to be found on Heligoland, despite straying from the general blueprint of the album.  It does so by embracing a slow, acoustic-oriented ballad style that evokes a sense of loss and loneliness in a way that brooding synths and rumbling bass haven’t been able to anywhere else on the record.  In direct contrast, Heligoland’s final track, Atlas Air centers around a whirling organ melody that imparts a sense of purpose to the piece and which aptly bookends what is perhaps the most energetic, frenetic and concentrated dose of Massive Attack on the entire disc.

Some might say that the face presented by the group on Heligoland is an indication that Massive Attack have lost their way.  An argument could be made that seven years spent working in tandem with the artistic visions of others in the film world or through collaboration with outside musicians have allowed Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall to transition into the role of uber-producers rather than focused artists.  Massive Attack purists may bemoan the fact that the group has slowly transformed into a vehicle for the electronic experimentations of a star-studded cast of musical guests, but at the very least Del Naja and Marshall have spread their wings from a creative standpoint and chosen to explore new horizons within the basic framework of the band.

Yes, Heligoland does offer enough of the group’s classic dark British sound to appease a large number of its fans.  However, it is clear that the marriage of strong pop sensibilities and underground energy that characterized Massive Attack’s most accessible work is now in the rearview mirror.

(This article is part of a series that will examine seminal albums released a decade ago and attempt to reevaluate their impact and significance through the lens of history.)

One of the most oft-used clichés associated with Madonna’s prodigious musical output has been the declaration that she is a ‘cultural chameleon’ who is capable of morphing her own sound to mimic and match the popular trends emerging around her.  This is the same sort of misguided label that was originally directed at David Bowie, a man whose desire to explore new genres and push the boundaries that had been imposed on him by critics, fans and the expectations of the industry frequently caused him to move in seemingly unpredictable directions.

I have never bought into the idea that Madonna’s ability to remain relevant through several of the seismic shifts in musical taste that occurred during her reign as a pop icon was anything other than her continued growth as an artist.  However, I do believe that as she entered the new millennium she became increasingly concerned about connecting with the youth market that she was no longer a part of chronologically.  This desire was reflected in her work from the year 2000 on, resulting in a definite alteration of her image as an artist and arguably a similar change in the quality of her music – a change that began with the album Music.

Music hit stores in September of 2000 and while it continued the definite electronic inflections of Ray of Light which had preceded it in 1998, it took those influences in a very different direction.  In the two year gap between the two albums the dance music universe that Madonna had once been a paragon of had been invaded by a revitalized house music scene.  At the forefront of this new wave of music were French producers such as Daft Punk and Cassius.  The harder-edged, less melodic sound was very funky and very danceable, and Madonna was definitely paying attention to the wave that was about to crash over North America and Europe, crested by Daft Punk’s crossover Discovery album in 2001.  At the same time, the more underground, grainy sounds of electro were starting to gain momentum in clubs around the world, and Madonna also had her ear turned in this direction when it came to drawing inspiration for her new album.

Madonna’s Music featured a number of producers, which was part and parcel of her customary studio process.  While she retained the services of William Orbit, whose influence had helped to make Ray of Light one of Madonna’s least mainstream records of the 90’s, she also enlisted the more radio-friendly talents of Mark Stent.  However, the most important contributions would come from in-house Maverick talent and Madonna protégé Mirwais Ahmadzai, a French producer who would author (among others) the title track and Don’t Tell Me.  Each of these songs, in addition to being successful singles would also help to push Madonna’s music style for the next 10 years in a completely new direction.

What did the future sound like to Madonna in the year 2000?  While the album offered several nods to her past – the ballads I Deserve It and Nobody’s Perfect, and the Austin Powers-esque Amazing (essentially a less catchy reprise of Beautiful Stranger) – it was clear that the soaring vocals and breakbeats that had dominated Ray of Light had been cast aside.  In their place the new Madonna shone through loud and clear in between the stop / start rhythms and chunky baselines of the album’s first track Music, a vocoder-laced entreaty to the DJ to ‘put a record on / I wanna dance with my baby’.  Rough around the edges without the sheen afforded to Ray of Light, the track was designed to hit dancers hard in the hips and offered compressed mid-range tones, crushed percussion and a pulsing single-note bass line.  Dynamically monotonous, Music also predicted the loudness wars that would soon sweep over the pop charts.

Two other standout tracks from the album – which were of course also singles – were less enthusiastic in their presentation of Madonna’s new musical agenda, preferring instead to gently guide loyal fans through their idol’s fresh sonic landscape.  Don’t Tell Me featured a straightforward structure with synth string highlights, but it also provided deftly processed vocals, a watered-down stuttering beat and the same droning bass found underpinning Music.  What It Feels Like For A Girl was slightly more ambitious in expanding horizons, combining a drum track composed from an electro artist’s beginner sample kit with a slightly glitchy main melody, tied together by Madonna’s ambiguously androgynous lyrics.

Overall, when taken together even with the filler ballads and pseudo-experimental tracks such as Paradise (not for me), the album presents the most mature portrait of Madonna available both to that point and beyond to present day.  While the effort made by the track Music to connect with both electro and French filter house was in no way subtle, both Don’t Tell Me and What It Feels Like For A Girl feature none of the musical stunts or self-importance that would litter her later work.  The more subtle approach taken by these songs when it came to breaking new ground in partnership with her core audience would be completely abandoned on the empty concept album that followed three years later (American Life).

What is the legacy of Music?  It could be said that this album represents the last time that Madonna took a calculated risk in the studio without resorting to the tired attention-getting devices of sampling the hooks of dance hits hailing from another era (Confessions on a Dance Floor) or awkwardly teaming up with pop stars half her age (Hard Candy) in order to generate hits.  More importantly, Madonna’s Music introduced American audiences to the French and electro influences that had been bubbling just under the surface of the mainstream (Fischerspooner, Peaches, Ladytron and Thomas Bangalter) and which would emerge more fully into the musical consciousness within the one to two year window following its release.  As for Madonna, while sales remained at the level expected of a superstar of her caliber throughout the decade, Music would mark the last time she could count herself as being genuinely positioned as the herald of any musical trend.

The automotive media had a field day this week with an internal memo that had been sent to Chevrolet employees in Detroit.  The contents of the message stressed that the word ‘Chevy’ was no longer to be used in any official communications regarding the brand, as it was causing too much confusion and diluting the Chevrolet image.

Naturally, the idea that a corporation could put the Chevy genie back in the bottle after 50 years of advertising and car culture had made the word as American as apple pie seemed ridiculous – and precisely the type of move that an out-of-touch corporate giant would blunder into.  While this particular mis-step certainly made it look like few things had changed at General Motors since the recent bankruptcy reorganization, the opposite is in fact true.  GM has come a long way in terms of redefining its image, re-staking its claim on the North American market and shoring up its financial performance over the past 10 months.

So much press was generated from the leaked internal memo that GM was forced to issue its own statement claiming that the wording had not been properly thought through, and that of course it would not discourage the public at large from continuing to use the word Chevy in the discussion of its products.  With regards to ‘wording,’ the most amusing part of the memo was the example given of Coke employing a similar singular corporate brand focus, ignoring the fact that the proper name for the manufacturer of the carbonated beverage is Coca-Cola, and that it has maintained dual brand identities for decades.

Regardless of the GM’s clarified position, internally Chevrolet will henceforth be referred to exclusively as ‘Chevrolet’– at least until the brand selects yet another advertising agency to take over its account, as GM has had little success in maintaining a long-term relationship with its Chevrolet campaign designers of late.  If the company continues to make moves like this, then perhaps it won’t need any external PR at all – as Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.