Dec 29

Dec 29 Teardrop, by Massive Attack

Would this be a top ten hit today?

This is a wonderfully atmospheric piece. Released April 1998, it is the only Massive Attack song to reach the UK top ten singles chart. And if you think the vocals are reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, that’s because they are sung by its former lead singer, Elizabeth Fraser. It’s a piece that takes its time to get going, so I wonder if, in today’s streaming culture, where you can easily skip a track that doesn’t grab you immediately, it would have been anywhere near as successful if released now. For me, it’s a piece that rewards its listener’s patience, as it slowly but surely seeps into your soul.

How do they do that?

A bit of instrumental before the vocals begin is normal, but in this piece you wait a full minute for Elizabeth Fraser to start singing. That first minute uses a gentle crescendo (starting quietly and gradually getting louder), adding instruments one by one giving an effect of something growing or coming closer. Whilst it lacks in your face impact, it creates anticipation. Imagine waiting as a child for a carnival parade to pass by and hearing it getting closer and closer, the sounds of the individual instruments and melodies becoming clearer as it approaches and that rising sense of excitement as you strain your head for that first glimpse of it coming into view. There is a sense of that here, albeit it more subdued.

The first sound you hear is literally noise - the hiss and crackle of an old vinyl record sampled from a 1973 song "Sometimes I Cry" by the jazz pianist Les McCann - and accompanied only by the drum section. Then emerging from the distance, the harpsichord enters with its distinctly ‘twangy’ string sound. Further layers build around that - a synthesised single note matching the lowest of those played by the harpsichord and emphasising the harmonic drone (a very early form of musical accompaniment using a single note that plays continuously or near so throughout a piece). It is 45 seconds in before we hear any other bass notes and when they arrive they are reverberant and ground us into a key and a more familiar harmonic structure.

The reverberations, echoes, crackles and hisses all give a sense of being surrounded by sound in the way that you might be in a cathedral or underwater - it is immersive. The ethereal nature of Fraser’s voice adds further atmosphere as it swoops and soars and rests on notes you don’t quite expect. But no sooner are we rewarded for our patience in awaiting the arrival of the singer, the music pares back to the softest of drum solos that’s not much more than a whisper and a heartbeat. This dynamic effect of building up the layers of the music (and increasing the volume) and then suddenly reducing it to its bare, quiet essentials occurs twice more during the piece, each increase in layers and volume being bigger than the one before making the dynamic contrast more significant each time. The musical content is otherwise pretty repetitive, but these techniques maintain momentum and our interest in the music.

A slow tempo. Atmospheric. Melancholic. All features of the so-called Trip hop genre of which Massive Attack were pioneers during the 1990s. But I am not sure it is music that can be so easily labelled and neatly filed in a category. For me it seems only to belong to itself.

Hope you enjoy it or feel inspired to listen to something new today.

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