FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Martina Topley-Bird – Forever I Wait
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RELEASED on 10th September, 2021…
PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Vermandel
the legendary Martina Topley-Bird released Forever I Wait. Produced by Topley-Bird, it is a magnificent album that has not got the sort of press and adulation I feel it deserves. Featuring collaborations and arrangements from Robert Del Naja (of Massive Attack), Euan Dickinson, Rich Morel, Christoffer Berg, Benjamin Boeldt and Tiadiad, I want to spend a bit of time with this album. Before getting to some reviews for Forever I Wait, here is what Topley-Bird’s Bandcamp page says about an album that I feel everyone should check out:
“'Forever I Wait' is Topley-Bird’s fourth long awaited studio album and her very first self-produced and curated piece of work to date. The album, set for a digital release on September 10th with a special “marble” vinyl edition, available to pre-order now, captures an extensive journey confronting, exploring, analysing and reflecting on the devastating fragilities of life as it ultimately seeks to make peace with what life is.
A sentient and sensual presence framed Tricky’s trip-hop pioneering white label debut release, Aftermath. Hauntingly unique and immediately recognisable, that voice became the defining timbre of a new music movement. Behind this voice was mysteriously soft-spoken, London-born Martina Topley-Bird, whose exquisite voice came to inspire and infuse other pioneering artists across all genres.
“It’s a trip through different emotional states and frequencies from insecurity and desire, all the way through to serenity and acceptance with themes that resonate from my young teens all the way through till today. Things that I’ve seen and things I’ve felt and worked through, although sometimes I sense them trying to return”
“Forever I Wait”, as the title alludes, was written and re-written over a long period of time.
“I had to change my way of relating to music and the music industry in order to make the record I wanted to make.…and that took time. And I took the time I needed. I started in London, moved and lived in America for the first time in my life, then briefly moved back to London and finished the record in Spain.”
“After trying to work on a new record for a couple of years, I came to a realisation that in order to move forward I had to separate the concept and vision I had for this record from me as a person. I had to shift my perspective. That was a big personal win and the beginning of “Forever I Wait.”
'Forever I Wait' leans on a multitude of tense sounds, dubby atmospherics and natural instrumentation to demand the listeners attention leading to over two decades of observations, experiences and musical sacrifices. It is a bi-product of the new perspective featuring carefully selected and tailored supporting arrangements from a handful of collaborators including Robert del Naja (Massive Attack), Rich Morel (Deep Dish), Christoffer Berg (Fever Ray) and Benjamin Boeldt (Adventure).
A truthful expression of desire and heartache “Forever I Wait “Is Topley Bird’s most precise and accurate album to date”.
Many might know her instantly from her work with Tricky. She is an accomplished solo artist in her own right. Perhaps her finest work is 2008’s The Blue God. I wanted to revisit her 2021 fourth studio album - as it is one I have recently passed through and taken a lot away from. An astonishing artist who has collaborated with everyone from Gorillaz to Massive Attack to David Holmes, Martina Topley-Bird is someone that everyone would have heard of at some time. Before getting to sopped reviews, I want to bring in parts of a few interviews she did to promote the album. I will start with her chat with CLASH from September 2021:
“As soon as the conversation moves on to her brand new album ‘Forever I Wait’, Martina becomes more chipper and animated. One of the long term collaborators on the new album is Robert del Naja, or D, as he’s referred to by friends, produced ‘Collide’, ‘Rain’, ‘Hunt’ and ‘Your Heart’. It turns out there is a crucial link between them. “Coming from Bristol and the mix culture, reggae and sound systems and punk, I know that Robert’s got that. There is an unspoken checklist of signatory motifs, an identity of the songs that both of us agree on,” she explains. “We don’t make punk music but there is a soul of that represented somewhere.”
Between the three previous solo albums and ‘Forever I Wait’, a seismic shift has taken place. In hindsight, the first and only clue as to what this would entail was a bittersweet, heart-wrenching single ‘Solitude’ in 2018. Seeing as the space previously reserved for nylon strings, harmonicas and a Fender Rhodes has now been snatched by drum machines, synths and midi controllers, the deal here is very much out with the old, in with the new, a fresh start rather than a comeback.
If Martina preferred to steer well clear of big names in the past to preserve her artistic integrity, now her skin has grown thick enough to take them on all at once. Enter Christoffer Berg, the Swedish whizz-kid behind Fever Ray, and Richard Morel, a hyphenate who has worked with New Order, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys, well-versed on toplines and packed dancefloors. “I was aware that Rich came from a more commercial background. What ended up on the record was ‘Wanted’, this melodically beautiful song, and ‘Game’, a fun, upbeat track. He brought an open, light sensibility and contrast to the rest of the record, which is moody, edgy.”
More to the point, this time around there she’s had a coherent vision, there’s no two ways about it. “I wanted to make an album with a broad appeal. I was trying to mash the abrasive, organic with electronic and synthesizers,” she sumps up. “I wanted synths on this record. That was my thing. If someone put them in, they were not taking them out again. They had the tension and texture and melody. They were my signature sound. If anyone had a problem with the synths, then they had a problem with me!” she quips, pointing both index fingers at herself, laughing.
But it’s obvious there is a lot more at stake here than winning a straightforward argument over the instrumentation. “It was my evolution, the sound that wasn’t there before, and it was my decision. On previous records, 'Some Place Simple', 'The Blue God' and 'Quixotic', these weren’t necessary my ideas how the tracks would start or evolve,” she contemplates. “I think it makes a lot of sense… Not as a solo artist but my whole history, my roots and my subsequent collaborations”.
There are different parts of an interview with The Guardian that I want to source. One where Martina Topley-Bird talks about Forever I Wait, working with Tricky on Maxinquaye, and their relationship together. Topley-Bird’s daughter, Mazy, died in 2019 aged only twenty-four. The album was almost completed when Mazy died. How gruelling and challenging it must have been for Topley-Bird to return to it:
“Forever I Wait was almost complete when Mazy died. I ask if it was difficult to return to the project. “Actually, connecting with the record was helpful,” she says. “And just going through the process of getting to my desk and making lists and doing a lot of computer work helped. Because I’ve always found that if there’s difficult emotions going on, doing things that are rote or mechanical can be helpful.”
I sense a weariness in her voice so ask if she’s OK to talk about her daughter. She lets out a big exhale. “I don’t know. Generally I’m not. I get a feeling of a ball in my stomach and it’s still very unpredictable how I’ll feel.” With a suddenness that seems to take her by surprise she starts to cry. “I’d like to be able to comfort other people that are affected by it, too,” she says after a while. “But I don’t even know how to talk about it. It was just the two of us for a very long time, and…” She trails off again and I suggest we move on.
“I’m sorry this has turned into a jolty ride,” she says with a laugh through the tears.
I’m sorry for making you cry, I say.
“It’s still unpredictable,” she says. “Nobody asks me on a day-to-day basis, so it’s not something I deal with. And so if I do go anywhere near it then, yeah, that starts happening and I’m not used to it.”
Martina Topley-Bird was born in London in 1975, growing up in a large family with five siblings and three step-siblings. Her father, Martin Topley, died before she was born; her surname combines his with that of her stepfather. After moving to Bristol, she studied at the prestigious boarding school Clifton College. But a chance meeting with Tricky – he heard her singing outside his house – sent her life down a more musical path. Was she a rebellious teen?
“I had quite a lot of attitude and was a tiny bit maybe arrogant, yeah,” she says. “I mean… yeah!”
What did her family make of the sudden change in her life?
“It wasn’t like a one-day thing. I did Aftermath but that didn’t get released for two years. It was kinda fun, people were calling to say that Björk liked the track and it sounded like Sade, but I was studying still. I’m not sure I told my parents about it.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Martina Fornace
It was later, while resitting some of her exams, that Topley-Bird embarked on a romantic relationship, worked on Maxinquaye and, as she puts it, her “life began to drift. I started to lose form, as it were.” She had sung in the school choir and in her piano teacher’s jazz band, but she had no recording experience when Tricky enlisted her as the record’s main vocalist. To make matters more confusing, it was one of the most unconventional records ever made: many of the vocals you hear are first takes, with Topley-Bird having never even heard the backing track before she recorded.
And she’s found a sense of fulfilment in working out how to express herself differently in her music. “Because I’m a lot more open. Maybe there’s some catharsis but I think it’s more an evolution, a growth. I’ve let go of some immature, restricting ideas. Bullshit beliefs that were not helping me achieve what I wanted to achieve or really be doing what I want to do.”
In April last year, Topley-Bird travelled to the mountains by the sea south of Valencia to decide on the tracklisting. The album ends with Rain, which sees her singing over a string quartet: “One day while walking in the rain/ I found my path along the way.” It speaks of acceptance, of living in the present. It feels like a moment of cleansing and spiritual rejuvenation.
The song’s lyric was written not by her but Nat. “It’s funny because she works in international development, she has never written lyrics before. But she thought she’d have a go. And I saw them and thought, ‘This is so not me. I would be cryptic and vague and I don’t know if I would be that person. But then I found a way to sing it.’”
She’s beaming with pride now. And a sense that, despite everything, she’s finally arrived at what she wants to say”.
Prior to the reviews, there is an interview I found that is relevant. There is a nice smattering of interviews. All really interesting to see. It is a pity that there were not more reviews for the stunning Forever I Wait. Juno Daily spoke with Martina Topley-Bird in October about one of her strongest albums yet:
“Forever I Wait could well be Topley-Bird’s strongest and most coherent album to date. Factor in how long it took to conceive and the elongated production process (although largely recorded between 2015 and 2018, it was only completed earlier this year), and you can only marvel at the results.
“Thank you,” Topley-Bird responds when Juno Daily offers its assessment of the album. “I think I now know how to make things work better together, and I deliberately didn’t work with a lot of elements. The producers I chose to work with, I did so because I thought I knew what they would come up with, and if that didn’t work, I had Benny [Benjamin Boeldt], who I knew could make it work.”
Although Topley-Bird is credited as the producer of Forever I Wait – a role she’s keen to define as “a courtesy of choice role”, in line with a traditional producer rather than an always hands-on one – Boedlt undeniably played a key role in the album’s creation, alongside a number of other producers and beat-makers whose sounds can be heard across the set’s 12 tracks (Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, Richard Morel, Depeche Mode collaborator Christopher Berg and California-based Tradiad all contributed).
“Benny was like the glue that held the project together,” Topley-Bird enthuses. “He worked with me on tracks I’d started myself, beefed up things I really loved but weren’t hitting hard enough in the low-end, and added really fascinating things to arrangements. He was able to take direction in that he made tracks that were nothing like his own music, but with pinpointed reference points. I think that’s the way for me to work.”
It was not always this easy, though. Topley-Bird admits that she has enjoyed mixed relations with some producers she’s worked with and in the past sometimes struggled to take on board constructive criticism from those she worked with. “I had to get over the idea that my ideas were precious and needed respecting and protecting,” she says candidly. “I realised that ideas were just that, but they were my ideas and that’s what we were doing – it’s about the ideas, not me and my feelings. If an idea works for the record I’m making, it stays, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is better than, ‘I don’t know’, ‘maybe’, or just being too uncomfortable to tell you what I really think.”
At several times during our conversation, Topley-Bird refers to having a specific vision for the album. While she doesn’t elaborate on that, Forever I Wait – and the Pure Heart EP that precedes it – certainly sound like a coherent musical statement. The LP starts with a blast of murky, guitar-laden Bristol soul that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and ends with the string-drenched poignance of ‘Rain’; in between, you’ll find a mixture of stirring soundscapes, thickset trip-hop, gritty grooves, bustling electro-pop, dubbed-out heaviness and lo-fi headiness. Throughout, the album is held together by her trademark voice, thought-provoking lyrics (all of which were written before the tragic death of her and Tricky’s daughter two years ago) and a distinctive aural atmosphere that recalls her musical roots in the Bristol scene of the 1990s.
“What I wanted to do is reclaim my entire history and make a coherent body of work that was an actual piece of art,” Topley-Bird asserts. “A real artistic statement, with an emotional arc and a beginning, a middle and an end. That’s in contrast to other things I’ve done in the past, which had beautiful and rather wonderful things within them, but had something about them that felt like exercises. That’s a terrible word to use because it sounds kind of reductive, like there wasn’t emotion and creativity that went into them, but I think it’s accurate.”
The idea of reclaiming her history, and specifically embracing the role she played in the darker and murkier end of the Bristol sound, is something she returns to a few times while talking about the album. “Sonically, claiming my history was important, because when I started making solo records, I was being reactive,” she admits. “It was like, ‘I’m not going to do everything I just did’. When you’re younger, you try things out. With a bit of distance, it’s easier to realise what’s yours.”
Topley-Bird admits that she’s not been back to Bristol for many years, but she now understands how much the city shaped her personal and musical DNA. “It’s still part of me and I do claim that Bristol sound as mine as well,” she muses. “I know why things from Bristol sound the way they do and that represents me. Growing up as a mixed-race person, it was much easier in Bristol than anywhere else in England because it’s very mixed, socio-economically as well as racially. That’s why there’s reggae, soul, hip-hop and punk all mixed together. The people I make music with, it’s part of their DNA and it’s part of mine as well.”
With that, our time is almost up. So how has the interview-shy Topley-Bird found our encounter. “I really enjoyed it actually,” she chuckles. “I haven’t been to England in ages and even talking to English people is a rarity for me. It’s been good”.
The first of two reviews I want to bring in is from Spectrum Culture. It is obvious that Forever I Wait’s title is apt. This is like her debut album. Where she had had control and released something that is meaningful to and representative of her. That makes it even more important that people check out this incredible work and appreciate its significance. How personal it is to Martina Topley-Bird:
“Forever I Wait may be Martina Topley-Bird’s fourth solo album but she recently told The Guardian that she regards it as her debut. Her reasoning is that it’s the first time she’s taken full control of a release, carefully choosing who she worked with and piecing together the tracks over several years.
Written largely before the death of Mazy, the daughter she had with former partner Tricky, it’s also her first album in a decade (2010’s Some Place Simple, which reworked her earlier material). She wasn’t entirely absent from music during this time, being an in-demand collaborator and appearing with the likes of Gorillaz and Diplo.
It’s a fortuitous time to officially resurface given that the downtempo trip-hop she helped to pioneer is having a moment again, influencing Brit Awards winner Arlo Parks and being sampled by The Weeknd. It’s a sound she’s doubled down on across these twelve tracks. Where previous albums had a rag-bag approach to styles – dabbling in rock, soul and jazz – here she’s largely confined herself to one mood.
It would be easy to interpret this dark atmosphere in the light of her personal tragedy. Opening track “Pure Heart” finds her waiting for her heart “to heal so I can have a fresh start,” over grungy, low-slung guitars. It’s an emotional arc that closes on the final track, “Rain,” when she accepts she has to “let go of things and live in the now,” while the lightness of the strings speak of optimism for the future. This tone is an anomaly, with the song being quite unlike anything else on the release.
The vast majority of the album instead bears the unmistakable hallmarks of her collaborators, which include Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja, Fever Ray producer Christoffer Berg, and Depeche Mode remixer Rich Morel. “Hunt” has the creeping unease of those artists, with its rumbling bass noises, while “Free” could have been cut from the same cloth as Tricky’s Maxinquaye, its production being superficially sparse but an entire soundscape appearing when heard through headphones.
The way in which these tracks contrast disconcerting bass notes with icy synths and scuzzy guitars taps into the mid-’90s. Some of the production and lyrical concerns – including the crystal meth epidemic – nonetheless help to pull her soulful trip-hop into the newer territories that it always promised before it faded too fast. The album could have lost a couple of songs in this vein, the tone lacking in variation, but it also features some sparkling surprises.
“Wanted” drifts towards Zero 7 coffeehouse politeness with its dreamlike passages but “Love” has a gorgeous sleepy blues haze and “Collide,” a put down of “corporate greed” is a hiss of hi-hats and drum and bass rhythms. Best of all is “Game,” which leaps out of the speakers with its playfulness and barely disguised debt to Gorillaz.
In returning to her first musical home – having recorded with Tricky when she was still a teenager – Topley-Bird’s given the genre a partial rebirth. The album lacks the musical variety of her earlier recordings, but it rarely feels comfortable, her soulful and husky vocals carrying emotional depth that makes it worth the wait”.
I will end with a review from The Arts Desk. Many gave Forever I Wait the equivalent of three-and-a-half/four stars. Pretty respectable though, the more you listen, the more you realise that it is a minimum of four stars! A very strong album from one of music’s most distinctive voices:
“Martina Topley-Bird, who started out doing vocals for Tricky’s first single "Aftermath" aged 15, has matured.
On her fourth solo album, self-produced, she builds confidently on the dreamy vocal lines that were essential to the Bristol sound of the '90s.
On her previous solo ventures, it seemed as if she were in search of an identity, a rock chick one moment and a trance-weaver the next. She has definitely found herself: bathed in soft-edged dubby sounds that suit a sensual voice that makes a virtue of reverb, this is music that floats and supports Martina’s naked expression of vulnerability.
There are collaborations with Robert del Naja that could be outtakes from a Massive Attack album not yet made, Martina having worked as a live and studio vocalist for the Bristol band for half a dozen years. She has chosen her other collaborators with all the right intuitions – Christoffer Berg, Rich Morel, Benjamin Boeldt and Tialdia – all of them perfectly attuned to her breathy and soulful vocals.
Martina is a master of introversion, creating chiaroscuro songs that explore her inner states, playing darkly with existential angst and an ever-present sense of foreboding. All of this was present in Tricky’s first album Maxinquaye (1997), and it could be said that this classic and ground-breaking album was as much Martina as Tricky’s. Back then, she was thought to be Tricky’s muse, or the voice of his mother who wrote poetry and committed suicide when he was a child. Tricky and Martina’s daughter Mina committed suicide herself in 2019. The new album was mostly finished before Mina's tragic death, but it’s almost as if Martina were navigating a life haunted by self-destruction and suicidal tendencies born of excessive sensitivity and creative talent – fates shared in an uncanny way within the constellation of her intimate relationships.
The mood is somewhat relentless. There's little variation from a sound born of Bristol in the '90s, including the lilting beat of what was known as trip-hop, the nervous energy of drum’n’bass and the dreamscapes of dub. This is a mature album though, nourished by darkness and passion. Martina has dared face her demons, and her work has a depth well beyond her earlier solo work. “Sand” finds her with a sharper voice, ringed with the edge of an anger that has never been part of her palette. The closing song on the album, ”Rain”, bewitchingly lyrical with string quartet accompaniment, is a gem, and suggests another way forward into new and exciting territory”.
One of 2021’s best – and yet under-reviewed albums -, Martina Topley-Bird’s Forever I Wait is one that I would recommend to everyone. I hope the interviews and reviews have given you context and impetus to check the album out. Songs from it should get a peek onto radio playlists now and then. It is another essential listen from the London-born icon. If you have some time spare today, go and spend some of it with…
A truly excellent album.