Mezzanine

Massive Attack made their first two records as a loose collective. By 1998 the three members were barely speaking, and the album they fought their way through is colder and heavier than anything they had done. Guitars and dub bass replace the warm soul samples; the mood is dread, surveillance, and three in the morning. Teardrop, with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins singing over a beat that sounds like a heartbeat, became the song everyone knows, partly because it later opened the TV show House for years.