With His Own Eclectic Spin, Tricky Sings the Blues

The tricky thing about Adrian Thaws, one of the most acclaimed figures in British music these days, is that it’s difficult sometimes to figure out just where he fits in the contemporary pop scene.

In his wildly energetic performance Wednesday at the sold-out Mayan Theatre, the rapper-songwriter-producer’s music exhibited elements of everything from the silky, trance-like trip-hop style that he is credited with pioneering to bits of soul, reggae, hip-hop and rock.

Whatever the framing, Tricky--the 30-year-old performer’s professional name--deals in songs that express defiance and despair. The best way to think of him is simply as a modern bluesman--and a spectacular one at that.

The blues is one of the most valuable influences in 20th century popular music, an essential building block in everything from rock and rap to R&B; and jazz. But it has been relatively dormant creatively for decades.

Some of the form’s masters are still around, but they are hardly advancing the field, and the young crop of stars--a field that stretches from veteran Robert Cray to newcomer Jonny Lang--lacks the imagination and boldness to rejuvenate it.

Tricky may have been born in Bristol, England, rather than the Mississippi Delta, but he lived a life as tortured as anyone who worked the plantation fields. His mother committed suicide when he was 4, and he felt the sting of racism growing up in various housing projects.

The experiences filled him with a paranoia and rage that he funnels into his songs, which are sometimes so volatile that they might better be described as outbursts.

Rather than rely on the traditional and by now limited guitar-driven approach of the blues, he prefers to speak in the language of his generation--much the same way Bob Dylan combined another American tradition (folk music) with his own style of rock ‘n’ roll.

Onstage Wednesday, Tricky, who has shed his trademark mini-dreadlocks in favor of a shaved head, not only conveyed the message of the blues, but also exhibited some of the colorful, eccentric performing instincts of many of the genre’s founders.

Where such artists as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters were confident showmen who loved the spotlight, however, Tricky shuns it. For much of the night, he sang in near darkness. The occasional rushes of light were usually directed at the four backing musicians or two support singers.

Moving in the shadows, Tricky twisted his body during his raps with sudden, whiplash force, as if trying violently to free himself from a straitjacket.

Like the bluesmen, too, Tricky tends to sing about what he knows, which means lots of his stinging attacks on injustice and greed are aimed at the record business--as well as the more predictable turf of inner demons.

What he adds to the classic blues mix is the contrast of female vocalists, who add moments of tenderness and relief to his own intense, gravelly vocals. Though Martina Topley-Bird joins him on record, he shares the microphone on tour this time around with Dee Ellington and Carmen Ejogo. They don’t serve as background vocalists, but take turns on duets with Tricky and their own solo vocal turns.

One disappointment was that Tricky played fewer than half the songs from his new “Angels With Dirty Faces,” one of the year’s half-dozen most arresting albums. That meant he left out such softer numbers as “Singing the Blues” and “Broken Homes.”

He compensated by previewing some promising new material as well as revisiting inviting tunes, including the especially dramatic “Bad Dream,” from his first two albums.

The nearly two-hour set left the audience drained. When someone can generate music far-ranging enough to compete convincingly with the delicate tension of Portishead and the jackhammer force of Rage Against the Machine, you don’t worry about how to label it. You just applaud the breathless boldness of his art.