\u201cThat\u2019s my definition of success. Being able to do whatever I want to do musically, on my own terms, and people support me\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The rejection of the spotlight brought by Maxinquaye is one of many moments in a decades-long career in which Tricky has been presented with a clear run to fame, and bolted in the opposite direction. Live, he has always performed antisocially, with his back to the audience and minimal stage lighting \u2013 a choice which divides fans to this day. He quit Massive Attack in 1995, just as they were blowing up, over creative differences (in addition to the chips thing). When devoted fan David Bowie wrote a short, delirious piece of fiction about meeting Tricky for Q Magazine and then reached out directly, Tricky never pursued the potentially fruitful connection. \u201cIt was all too fast\u2026\u201d he reflected<\/a>, with some regret, in 2023. Still, you might argue that, for Bowie at least, the lived experience rang true to the fantasy, and was therefore the ideal outcome. \u201cThe phantom was known to move as a group of one,\u201d Bowie wrote<\/a> in Q. \u201cNever took prisoners. You\u2018d never catch him snorting vodka at the bar. You\u2018d never catch him period, I\u2018d been told. A shaman who\u2018d never slept with the Others, he was still pure, his spells unblemished.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[Creation Records co-founder] Alan McGee said to me once, \u2018You know what I like about you? You\u2019re not a celebrity,\u2019\u201d Tricky ponders now. \u201cSo I think that\u2019s [my definition of] success. Being able to do whatever I want to do musically, on my own terms, and people support me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Case in point: his most recent single, \u201cOut of Place,\u201d made its way onto BBC radio A-Lists despite being a wandering melancholic orchestral arrangement that makes a sharp u-turn into grinding post-punk without a chorus, or any vocals for the first 35 seconds. \u201cIt\u2019s not a radio song at all,\u201d he marvels. \u201cI think sometimes as artists we want to be the biggest, to sell the most tickets, the most records\u2026 But that to me is success.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cOut of Place\u201d is the last track on Tricky\u2019s latest album, Different When It\u2019s Silent. Released independently through his own False Idols label, it\u2019s Thaws\u2019 first album as Tricky since 2020\u2019s Fall To Pieces, which was made in the wake of his daughter\u2019s sudden death in 2019. (Mina Topley-Bird took her own life on the ward of an NHS adult psychiatric hospital in Darlington; an inquest into her death ruled that there had been a failure in care. She was just 24.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that Thaws hasn\u2019t kept himself busy in the last six years; he worked on a collaborative album with producer Mike Theis under the name Theis Thaws, a joint album with collaborator Marta Z\u0142akowska, and put together an all-star 2021 project under the name Lonely Guest, which included contributions from Idles\u2019 Joe Talbot, Murkage Dave, Max\u00efmo Park\u2019s Paul Smith, and, Lee \u201cScratch\u201d Perry. But, crucially, side projects can come without the strings of press, music videos or touring attached to a Tricky release. \u201cI wouldn\u2018t say I was reluctant to release music under my own name. But I wasn\u2018t that interested, to be honest. I didn\u2018t have the motivation,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n Different When It\u2019s Silent was also conceived as a side project. It was McGee, now his manager, who convinced him to put it out as Tricky upon hearing the material, deeming it the artist\u2019s best work since Maxinquaye. So here we are, and here is the album \u2013 a brooding, uranium-heavy meditation on grief slash celebration of life that marks his \u201cfirst indie rock \/ grunge album\u201d and holds Mina\u2019s presence throughout. On \u201cOut of Place\u201d \u2013 which originally appeared on Marta Z\u0142akowska\u2019s album When It\u2019s Going Wrong (2023) under a different title, sung by the Polish vocalist \u2013 Tricky reclaims lyrics as a powerful declaration of fatherly love: \u201cI\u2019m singing, I sing for my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Incidentally, Different When It\u2019s Silent is the first Tricky album to feature mostly male vocals. Whether it\u2019s Martina, Marta, or any of his other collaborators, the texture of Tricky\u2019s discography has been largely mapped by women, regardless of the fact that it\u2019s the low, slow murmur of Thaws\u2019 voice that people most associate with it. On this album, though, he takes a backseat. The most definitive voice on the record belongs to the young, fellow Bristolian singer-songwriter Mitch Sanders (even if he does sing in a somewhat androgynous register, with reviewers comparing it to Portishead\u2019s Beth Gibbons). On earlier versions of the album, Thaws\u2019 voice was completely absent.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t realise it at the time, but a lot of the lyrics are about my daughter,\u201d Tricky says of the decision. \u201cThe lyrics [to \u2018Out of Place\u2019] are the same ones I wrote for Marta on \u2018Moving Through Water\u2019, but when they\u2019re sung by a man it has a totally different perspective. So I think it was subconsciously knowing that this is about my daughter, and thinking, like, \u2018Marta can\u2019t sing for me on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Tricky\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1451357.jpg\")
Photography Steve Gullick<\/p>\n