While all the Bristol bands had dark moments, and Portishead's latest is dour in the extreme, Tricky has probably been the most inaccessible of the bunch with album's like Pre-Millennium Tension, an abrasive and brutal detour from 1996.
In contrast, while Knowle West Boy deals with some heavy memories it has an uplifting and poppy mood with lashings of darkness and discord too.
As always he has a number of guest singers - all relative unknowns - to play off his sinister and slightly sleazy vocal style.
The reggae-dance hall influenced Bacative and Baligaga features Tricky's Jamaican cousin, Rodigan; the beautifully breathy and plodding Past Mistake has, rather appropriately, his ex-girlfriend Lubna on lead vocals; and Joseph features a busker of the same name who he met outside a Los Angeles food store.
There's also a trio of tracks that rate as three of his best. First, Coalition creaks and bleeps along, referencing Gil Scott Heron's Revolution Will Not Be Televised, then it gives way to the wonky strings, paranoid beats and hushed vocals of Cross To Bear, and on to his banging and mangled cover of Kylie Minogue's Slow which is better than the original. Download those if nothing else, but overall this is Tricky's best since the heavy-going Pre-Millennium Tension 12 years ago.