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Tricky Admits Last Albums Sucked, Shares Much Better ‘Nothing’s Changed’

Tricky 'Nothing's Changed' 'False Idols' Francesca Belmonte

Tricky bummed out a lot of fans and critics when he dropped 2010’s strikingly vanilla Mixed Race. “It seems odd that Tricky’s self-professed ‘gangster album’ may go down as the polyglot producer’s most bland offering yet,” we wrote, and it turns out that the man born Adrian Thaws agrees. In the announcement for his forthcoming tenth LP False Idols, he lays it all out: “I was trying to prove something to people, trying to do something to please other people and also myself at the same time, which is never going to work … My last two albums, I thought they were good, but I realize now they weren’t. This album is about me finding myself again.”

It’s perhaps fitting then that our first taste of the May 28 release, which comes via Tricky’s own False Idols label with an assist from !K7, is called “Nothing’s Changed.” Over swelling strings and choppy beats, vocalist Francesca Belmonte sings in a creepy coo eventually returned by our sprechgesanging host: “Nothing’s changed / I still hurt the same.” It’s wise for the trip-hop innovator to roll back his style since the ’90s sound he pioneered is in vogue, and, in truth, the song is as emotive and swollen with gloom as you want one of Tricky’s to be. Download or stream the track below.