Vulnerable, Tricky's seventh long player, is being touted as a "return to form". This is presumably because of the decidedly lukewarm responses that greeted recent LPs like Blowback and Angels With Dirty Faces. The main problem of course is that everyone expects England's most blunted auteur to come up with something as mind-blowingly zeitgeist-capturing as his debut Maxinquaye. Face it kids: it ain't gonna happen. The album lists from side to side in that inimitably Tricky-esque way, zig-zagging through dark, surrealist dreamscapes and catchy pop hooks and offering plenty of trademark unhinged beats and hard-core thrash-outs (yes, he still has a thing for nu-metal) along the way. His distinctive verbal entropy is all over the album--perhaps too much--but is balanced by the equally omni-present chanteuse Costanza. Aside from Tricky's own varied pieces, there are two covers: an excellently sexual reworking of The Cure's "Love Cats" and a less inspiring version of XTC's "Dear God". Not exactly a "return to form", or anything close to Maxinquaye, but still a solid and inventive album that stands up on its own merits. --Paul Sullivan