At 19 minutes long, it is debatable whether Marta’s astounding debut record meets the eligibility criteria for this List, one of which is the requirement that entries be full-length albums (not EPs). So, I’ll start by making my case. Although it’s short, When It’s Going Wrong has 9 distinct tracks, and it ebbs and flows like an album rather than an EP. It always feels like I’m playing an album when I listen to it. Marta and her collaborator Tricky have both separately referred to it as her debut album (self-identification is important!). Spotify likewise designates it an album, not an EP. In contrast, the debut EP by metalcore supergroup Better Lovers (only a few minutes shorter than When It’s Going Wrong, and, as it happens, a release that I have also adored and that would have come second on this List were it to be considered eligible), is comprised of only 4 songs, ‘feels’ to me like an EP, and the band and Spotify both designate it as such. I accept it’s a wafer-thin line and, ultimately, I’m considering When It’s Going Wrong an eligible album because I darn well want to. It’s my List so I’ll interpret the rules how I want.
And, so, to the album itself.
Trip hop has long been a genre I’ve loved, but for the most part I’ve tended to return to the 90s/2000s classics by Massive Attack, Portishead, Morcheeba et al, rather than newer offerings (a few Hælos flirtations aside). I’d not heard much to compete with the genre’s heyday since the early-2000s. But, in stumbling across the debut from Polish singer Marta Złakowska (just Marta to you and me) in late summer, I may have found my favourite ever trip hop record. Certainly, it’s my favourite since Massive Attack’s Mezzanine blew my mind in 1998.
I was already deeply in love with When It’s Going Wrong before I realised it was a collaboration between Marta and a godfather from that classic trip hop era, Tricky. This connective tissue – especially to Massive Attack, which Tricky was in for their first two records – perhaps explains why I took to it so instantly. So the story goes, Marta met Tricky by chance when his vocalist dropped out mid-European tour, in Krakow, and, as he searched for a last minute replacement rather than cancel, a local promoter said they knew of a member of the bar staff at a pub down the road who could sing. After then going on to provide about 2/3 of the vocal performances on Tricky’s 2020 album Fall to Pieces and being a key member of his 2021 trip hop collective experiment Lonely Guest (the former being solid and the latter being a decidedly mixed bag), Marta is now heading out on her own. Kinda. Tricky’s fingerprints are still everywhere here, but in shaping his work in Marta’s image rather than the other way around, the pair have hit on something amazing. Trip hop 2023 style.
Tricky’s production on When It’s Going Wrong is unassuming and careful. His beats are simple and restrained, but also often unexpected. Take the show-stopping ‘Today’ – which is nominally a cover of a Jefferson Airplane song from 1967, although the tracks are chalk and cheese – where Tricky switches from a mid-tempo beat to something approaching drum and bass part way through the bridge. There are other such curve balls. ‘Nowhere’ has no drums at all, and instead is almost entirely played on the double bass (with a few violins here and there). ‘Czarno Czarny’ – sung in Polish – is also double bass led but is even more minimal. Massive Attack, these tracks are not. And, yet, the record also features the likes of ‘Moving Through Water’, which was written about Tricky’s daughter who sadly passed away far too young, and which suddenly breaks out the guitars. Just like that, we’re in Protection territory.
Marta’s voice is sultry and beautiful but it’s never polished or perfect. Her work on When It’s Going Wrong has a live quality throughout. It’s almost as though the pair have decided to flag actively that there is no autotune here. Beth Gibbons is the obvious comparator, although Marta’s voice is perhaps not quite that raw. Lyrically, while there is a little of Tricky’s writing on When It’s Going Wrong (especially, as noted, on ‘Moving Through Water’), when it comes to the words, this is Marta’s show. Like the record more generally, her lyrical choices are strange and disarming, without ever being in your face: ‘I was out walking, don’t have a dog’; ‘I want that money, I’ll take time to count it.’
Overall, When It’s Going Wrong is a wonderful album, which is full of oddity, allure, and depth, but also extreme simplicity and hushed atmospherics. When Tricky was asked recently about whether he thought the record would turn Marta into a star, he dismissed the question: ‘Marta doesn’t care about being famous, she just wants to sing.’ And that may be a key reason why When It’s Going Wrong works so well. Neither Tricky nor Marta have any interest in what may or may not be played on the radio or how to rack up the most streams. They just made precisely the album that they wanted. And they wanted it to be absolutely incredible. And really short.
