When Grace Jones emerged after a prolonged self-imposed exile as part of last summer's Massive Attack-curated Meltdown festival-- at 60, fearlessly clad in a corset and thong-- she was met with the predictable cries of comeback. But Jones' performance felt less like a resurrection and more like a return, comet-like. After all, how can a personality as huge as Jones' ever really vanish? She might slip off to the side, but she's never really gone.
All the same, Hurricane is Jones' first new album in nearly 20 years. And unlike her revered early material from the 1980s, which found her reinventing and often outright owning songs by the Normal, Pretenders, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tom Petty, and Roxy Music, Hurricane features all originals, each a Jones co-write at that. Yet Jones' collaborators clearly had a notion of what songs-- and what sounds-- would be a good fit for her, and space-age riddims seem to be it this time around. In fact, at first the disc almost seems to be returning the favor to Bristol's best, sometimes sounding like a tribute or lost sequel to Massive Attack's Mezzanine, recreating that oddly timeless album's dubby menace.
But the resemblance may be mostly coincidence, a product of circumstance. At least some of Hurricane was reportedly recycled from several sessions stretching back as far as a decade, including the titular first single, a Tricky collaboration. He's not alone among the disc's many guests, either, which include Brian Eno, Tony Allen, and the indomitable Sly & Robbie, always Jones' greatest ally, foil, and support team. But this being Grace Jones, she easily upstages her contingent of helpers. Indeed, Jones isn't so much a singer as a force of nature, a black hole that pulls all attention right to its center. Or, to invoke the more terrestrial metaphor of the album's title track: "I can be cool, soft like the breeze/ I'll be a hurricane, ripping up trees!"
That nicely sums up the album's dual strengths, with Jones taking charge as one-woman wrecking crew but, more surprisingly, occasionally ratcheting things down to an introspective and intimate level as well. Jones also proclaims that she can give birth to sheep, so her particular brand of crazy is never far behind. But if it's Jones' kookiness that keeps her so interesting, it's her instinct for strong material that makes her so compelling. Surely, as far as reintroductions go, the opening "This Is" is killer, its relentless dancehall pulse as ear-catching as Jones' angular form is ever eye-catching.
Immediately, however, the Wendy and Lisa co-write "Williams' Blood" reveals a new, explicitly autobiographical side to Jones, as she pays tribute to her mother Marjorie and the gift of music she passed down to her daughter. The track is a tour de force, from its turn to the dark and electric to its passing quote of "Amazing Grace". "Corporate Cannibal", at one point the title of the album, is stranger but also slightly aware of its own ridiculousness. ''I'll consume my consumers, with no sense of humor," Jones growls, before kicking into throbbing low-end gear. "I'm Crying (Mother's Tears)" is slower and suppler, giving Jones a chance to hit a few notes as she once again honors her mother.
From here on out, Hurricane is classic Jones. "Well Well Well", "Sunset Sunrise", and the creeping "Love You to Life" are all reggae-rock hybrids that would fit any year in the past 30, and the pummeling slo-mo electro-dub of title track a statement of purpose if ever there was one. "Devil in My Life" ends the disc on a restrained industrial note, its lyrics apparently drawn from an evening spent people watching at a party. Grace Jones, people watching, ceding the spotlight and staring from the sidelines? Now that's a shock. That Grace Jones would finally break radio silence with a disc this exciting is somewhat less so.
