Tricky

Different When It’s Silent is the first Tricky album in six years. Since 2020’s Fall to Pieces the musician has released an album and self-directed film as Lonely Guest (a 2021 all‑star project that included Oh Land, Marta Złakowska, Idles’ Joe Talbot, Murkage Dave, Maxïmo Park’s Paul Smith and, in one of his final appearances on record, Lee “Scratch” Perry). Three years later came Fifteen Days, a collaborative album from Adrian Thaws and producer Mike Theis as Theis Thaws. Then, last year, he and Marta released a joint album, Out The Way. All of those projects came out via False Idols, the label he founded in 2013. You can’t say Tricky’s not been busy.

But Different When It’s Silent is the first Tricky album in six years for another reason, too: in 2019 his daughter died suddenly. He says, “To be honest with you, since my daughter died, I want to work. I want to do stuff. But all the press, being on camera, everything just changed when she died. I've never been a pop star as such but: that made me even more want to go in the background.” Pointing to Fall to Pieces, released the year after her passing, he adds, “I was in pieces when I made that album. It was almost like I had to get that out of me. And then after that, I was more worried about Marta's album or the label. So, I wouldn't say I was reluctant to release music under my own name. But I wasn't that interested, to be honest. I didn't have the motivation. Releasing an album under your name, you got to do certain stuff. I can bring out a side‑project with no press, no photographs, no videos, no tour, nothing at all. It's easy.”

Then, in 2025, Tricky’s new manager Alan McGee heard the songs Tricky had been working on in France and in his Bristol studio. Tricky thought it would be another side‑project until McGee said, “Mate, this is a Tricky album. This is the best thing since Maxinquaye. This has got to be a Tricky album.” It was McGee who convinced him to put it out under his own name.

The piece describes Different When It’s Silent as, in its words, “no question, the best Tricky album since his groundbreaking 1995 debut.” It calls the 15th studio album tight, taut, focused, real, raw, rich, melodic, melancholic, defiant, textured, layered, provocative, grief‑stricken and joy‑bringing — Tricky’s musicianship at its confident, no‑one‑else‑sounds‑like‑this best.

The album opens with the skeletal blues of “Still See Me There,” which begins with “make me want to die” — a deliberate callback to “Makes Me Wanna Die” from Pre‑Millennium Tension. Tricky notes that this album is “the first album I've done with mostly male vocals. There's only one female vocal on this, Marta. So that's deliberate for a man singing 'make me want to die'. It just changes things.”

The main male vocalist is young Bristolian singer‑songwriter Mitch Sanders, who is signed to Island. Tricky describes their connection: Mitch is like “a nephew,” someone from the same neighbourhood and community who shared pubs and football. That sense of shared environment is what made Mitch the right fit, Tricky says.

Mitch leans in on several tracks: his voice is prominent on the urgent rock of “I'm Yours,” and his eerie falsetto hovers on the electro throb of “Because I Don't Know,” singing, "Can you feel my pain? Do you feel the same? Just let me know. Just let me know." Sanders is joined on “Be Still in the Pain” by Bristol rapper Red Run Rambo, whom Tricky calls “a really good lad” who spent time in prison and now does social work, going into prisons and talking to kids.

Mitch also wrote “Paris Maybe.” Tricky says, “That's Mitch's song. To me it was a no‑brainer, but Island didn't want it. When I heard it, I thought: that's a pop vocal. So if I do the music, it don't have to be pop to get close to pop. So I took the vocals and redid the music.”

Other ideas and collaborators appear throughout the album: there is a cover of “Marinade” by Dope Lemon (Angus Stone), with largely new lyrics by Tricky — “I fucking loved that song for years,” he says. “Piano” features an opera singer; “Marinade” includes violin and cello. “So Cold” has drum'n'bass‑adjacent production. The funk of “Frontier Town” foregrounds vocals from Christian Pattemore (Forgotton Pharaohs), a connection that began when Pattemore was driving McGee around Los Angeles and made Tricky laugh; Tricky asked him to send music, and Pattemore sent the track that became “Frontier Town.”

As ever, Tricky pulls talent and inspiration from everywhere. “Making music is an opportunity for artists to bring someone along. I feel like that's part of the career... I always feel like it's good to bring someone who's not known. Who's not a famous actress or a famous singer or a famous this or a famous that. Just people around you. And it's easier. And it's just a good vibe,” he says.

Beneath the collaborations is a seam of loss, absence and pain. “I'm Yours” bubbles with grief, sadness and anger; Tricky says, “I've had emotional loss, but I've never had emotional loss and mental loss. I really lost my mind. Nothing looked the same, nothing tasted the same, nothing sounded the same. So, yeah, I suppose, there is some anger on that track.”

The album closes with the charged “Out of Place,” Tricky sharing vocals with Marta. He says plainly, “I sing for my daughter,” and explains that the song — originally written for Marta’s album — became his to reclaim. “Her vocals are mellow, different. And it's almost like punk, my vibe. I knew it had to be the last track. The only female vocal on the album, and it's the last track, and it's me talking about my daughter. It's a great way to end the album. And then I can move on. There will always be lyrics about my daughter in my songs. But it won't be way so heavy. I can move on.”

On the record and in interviews Tricky says he is emotionally ready to start his life again: he wants to tour and record, and describes being grateful to make music for a living. “I'm thankful to be able to do this for a living. I'm very grateful for the opportunity I've gotten to live this life and make music. I just love it. I adore going in the studio. I don't have to answer my phone. It's real freedom. So I cannot wait to do more. But Alan's slowing me down — because I want to do a Nearly God album again, but call it Nearly Good! And Alan's like: 'Alright, let's do that in '27, mate!' But, you know,” he concludes, grinning wide, “I just love making music.”

Different When It’s Silent is presented as the first Tricky album in six years for all the reasons — good and bad — and the piece concludes that, on this life‑celebrating record, “it wholly, vividly, brilliantly sounds like it.”