My immediate response to Blowback was indifference; lackluster trip-hop songs from Tricky, half-baked in collaboration with who’s who of recording chic (Alanis Morissette, Ed Kowalczyk, Anthony Kiedis, John Frusciante, Flea, Cyndi Lauper, Ambersunshower, and Hawkman). And the album seemed so cut-and-dry bad, that I couldn’t close the Blowback’s door just yet. So I went to a Tricky fan and a friend whose music mind is much more cultivated than mine, Jeff Acker:

S.H.: So…do you like it?
J.A.: It is Tricky. I figured that would be an automatic. His last couple albums have been hit or miss, but I assumed the best. This is not Tricky’s best work, and the only thing Tricky about it seems to be his name on the cover.
S.H.: But have you always gotten the impression of him as being so blasé? Trip-hop always strikes me as being infinitely more evocative in what sounds or beats it can produce. This seems straight-laced and constrained—it genuinely feels like a not-behind-the-wheels sell-out album. Why he picked his Hollywood debut to do it, is beyond me. 
J.A.: This is straight-laced for Tricky…incredibly straight-laced. But to say that Tricky is blasé is totally discrediting him for the landmark that was Maxinquaye and the avant-garde adventure of Pre-Millennium Tension. But I’ll agree, this sounds like a sell-out album, if there is such a thing. Blowback sounds like a rock record…produced by a hip-hop producer.
S.H.: A bland record produced by an unimaginative producer…
J.A.: …or produced by a producer who has lost his imagination…
S.H.: …or an artist-producer who wants to be produced and artistically reigned in because he doesn’t currently care. He was previously quoted as saying, “I didn’t want a producer in. You get a producer and you end up with chorus-verse-chorus-verse, or the record company will get you a producer who can get you on radio.” Suddenly he thinks it’s creatively beneficial to be constrained? Is this reactionary pole against Pre-Millennium Tension?
J.A.: Totally. Maxinquaye was incredibly fresh for its time, but I just felt that Tension was so imaginative. Generally people didn’t like that album, because it was so unusual. Blowback is just a bunch of pop songs with lame Tricky beats. The song with Kowalcyzk sounds like Live, with a lame Tricky beat. The song with Anthony Kiedis sounds like a Peppers song, with a lame Tricky beat.
S.H.: When someone goes from indifference to the status quo to suddenly caring about radio-play, it’s really deflating. That’s the mistake Radiohead’s Amnesiac did not make. And let’s not forget the covers! He used to only cover songs he revered, like Prince or Public Enemy. Has he ever succumbed to kitsch, like the “Wonder Woman” cover? Or…[cringe]…“Something in the Way”?
J.A.: [cringe in unison] Previous to this album, I would’ve considered Tricky with deep respect, because only idiots or extremely ambitious and courageous musicians would cover Prince or Public Enemy. “Wonder Woman” was a huge let-down for me. I love Tricky, and I love John Frusciante.  Both of them supplying vocals? It had to be great. But it isn’t. And “Something in the Way” just feels blasphemous. Not because I feel some disgust with Tricky and Hawkman doing a Nirvana song, but because the song is just terrible. And Hawkman does not make it any better with his raga rants that plague the rest of the album.
S.H.: You mean Hawkman’s Shaggy-esque reggae-in-a-bottle vocals? And hasn’t he worked pretty autonomously with his other list of collaborators? Before this, someone like Bush could appear on his repertoire, and he could still hold his head high. As you put it earlier, though, this doesn’t seem like a Tricky album where he invited collaborators; it sound more like a compilation of what he’s done for other people’s albums.
J.A.: Exactly. This album feels like a Tricky album without having Tricky involved at all. Maybe he’s getting lazy. Maybe he’s lost imagination. Maybe it’s his record label pushing him for some friendliness for radio. The only redeeming track on here is “Bury the Evidence,” and it may be the only track that suggests that Tricky still has a soul, or, at least the same soul that gave us Maxinquaye and Tension. Blowback, simply, blows.
S.H.: It’s a blow-job album. Or a blow-job to the masses.
J.A.: I just hope he ends this streak now, or that this might be a misfire.  I hate to see Tricky flush his credibility down the john. 

And there you have it.