f I had a nickel for every artist that- after a limp stretch- confessed/apologized/bullshitted me with the old “I got sucked into the industry politics, but now I’m back, just making music for myself, and this is my best work ever” story, I could start my own artist-friendly record label, and hope that my philanthropic efforts could at least put a dent in the outpouring of whiny rock-star exploitation rants that get excreted into public consciousness every year.


In an effort to generate enthusiasm for his latest album- Vulnerable- everyone’s favorite asthmatic, twisted faced, German-Jamaican has been blowing the cobwebs off this well worn marketing schtick to anyone who’s still listening.


And it makes sense, really.


After an early career spent inventing “trip-hop”, releasing one of the best albums of the 90s (and one of the most promising debut albums I’ve ever heard) and a pair of inscrutably dense, decidedly un-commercial (but similarly brilliant) follow-ups, Tricky spent the latter half of the last decade chasing his own tail, rehashing his strengths, falling prey to his weaknesses and penning diatribe after self-fulfilling diatribe about his failure to recapture the public imagination or generate any serious commercial success (culminating in 2001’s embarrassing anti-Island Records EP, Mission Accomplished).


So clearly, there was really nowhere to go but... California?


Between his relocation to the sunshine state, his comfortable stasis with new label Anti and the warm yellow hues of Vulnerable’s accompanying art, this is clearly a changed Tricky. But to what end? In the albums opening moments, the most obvious development is the presence of vocalist Costanza Francavilla- apparently a fan who slipped her demo to Tricky’s drummer, and whom he employs on most of the album in the breathy madonna/whore role originated by Tricky’s once girlfriend/costar Martina Topley- Bird


So striking is Francavilla’s vocal resemblance to Topley-Bird that listening to her deliver Tricky’s fractured meta-sexual word associations leaves the same odd taste in your mouth that you’d get watching a guy dress his new girlfriend in his ex-wife’s clothes and pose for pictures with her.


Overall, however, the mood here is lighter than anything he’s done before, and the tandem attack of Tricky’s wheeze and Topley-lite’s come-hither moans makes Vulnerable, at the very least, more cohesive than 2002’s all-star train wreck Blowback.


As with Blowback, though, Vulnerable finds Tricky adrift sonically. The best tracks, like the opener “Stay” and the forthcoming single “Antimatter” show the most promise for a genuine artistic rebirth. They’re bouncy and somewhat catchy post new wave experiments. On “Stay” in particular, Tricky effectively marries his formative affinity for hypnotic, repetitive dub to a dramatic, slowly building glitch-scape full of muted guitar bits, bleeps and a surprisingly convincing acoustic string section. “Antimatter” is less ambitious, sounding suspiciously informed by Garbage’s electro-grunge-pop, but still manages to sound excited and rejuvenated.


From there, the album is all over the place. To his credit, Tricky often wanders beyond the musical shorthand in which he’s wallowed for so long, the tracks range from a sparse acoustic guitar-anchored (and uncharacteristically melodically faithful) cover of “Dear God to half hearted stabs at industrial metal on “How High” and “Moody”(his inexplicable embrace of chunky guitar riffing has to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to his music), to retreads and slight variations on his signature ideas, to the downright dull (the wasted potential of a Tricky cover of “The Love Cats”)


Deconstructing the Cure’s silly feline hijinx sounds, in theory, like the perfect blueprint for Tricky’s brooding kinky sex-funk. But the aimless and oversimplistic bass hook around which the track revolves isn’t funky enough to inspire head-bobbing, nor twisted enough to realize its own kinky potential. At his best Tricky has always toed the fine line between exploiting the hypnotic potential of a perfect groove, and being downright repetitive. “The Love Cats”- like much of Vulnerable- winds up firmly on the wrong side of that line.


Another hoary tagline that Tricky has been attaching to the promotional campaign for Vulnerable is the assertion that this is his most “personal” album and that- for the first time- he’s revealing his true self (thus the title, I suppose). It’s a confusing claim, given the lack of personality on display in most of the lyrics here, many of which sound like they could have been generated by a tricky-bot (“I come in peace, until the release”). And the fact is, that as much as for his production prowess, Tricky has always been a compelling artistic figure precisely because of his intimate (if creepy) subject matter and persona. This is the man who- on “Vent” from 1996’s Pre Millennium Tension- constructed a terrifying metaphor for sexual and emotional dependency out of a lover hiding his asthma inhaler.


There’s nothing like that on Vulnerable, nor any of the brutal ego, the dense claustrophobic paranoia, nor -even more disappointingly- the glimpses of humanity and desperation that provided such striking, touching relief to the aforementioned darkness.


Tricky has found his own private California now, is unshackled from the machine against which he spent so long raging, and has a new chanteuse who’s a reasonably credible facsimile of her antecedent. And yet this record is still an example of mediocrity. Perhaps for Tricky, as with many others, the truism is relevant: you can’t reinvent the past, but while audiences may pay to see it, it’s hardly an artistic success.