Massive Attack have shared ‘Boots on the Ground’, a new collaboration with Tom Waits, out now on all streaming platforms.
The track marks Waits’s first original music in fifteen years, his last recording being 2011’s Bad As Me, and represents Massive Attack’s first new music since 2020. It is, by any measure, a significant release: two of the most uncompromising voices in their respective worlds, arriving together at a moment that seems to have demanded exactly this kind of song.
‘Boots on the Ground’ addresses the machinery of war and the human cost of those who command it from a distance, placing it squarely in the tradition of the protest song while sounding like nothing else in that tradition. Waits has spoken about the collaboration’s long gestation with characteristic dryness, noting that he accepted Massive Attack’s invitation “many years ago” and that their delay in releasing it never concerned him. “Today, as in all of mankind’s yesterdays, guarantees this type of song will never go out of style,” he said. “Man’s folly of fiascos is a feast for the flies.”
That last line is not incidental. The release is accompanied by a 12-inch vinyl, with ‘Boots on the Ground’ on the A-side and an exclusive Waits B-side titled ‘The Fly’, described as a showcase of his trademark spoken word. The vinyl is pressed in an eco-conscious ‘EcoSonic’ format at 180g, available in red, white and blue, packed at random. A video also accompanies the single.
