Music Review: Grace Jones, Hurricane

By Steve Morley

By the time recording artist, model and actress Grace Jones brought her angular and imposing presence into the public eye in mid-1980s movies like Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill, her androgynous image had already proven too alienating for mainstream acceptance in the pop music world. She thrived in the cultish dance-music market of the late ’70s and ’80s, releasing a clutch of albums that combined R&B, techno-pop and reggae with sensuality and aggression, anticipating the high-tech urban pop styles to follow. On Hurricane, her first album in nearly 20 years, Jones both revisits and updates the sound of her early ’80s prime. In the process, she proves that her dramatic, rhythm-driven style remains edgy enough to keep middle-of-the-road listeners at arm’s length even two decades later.  

The malevolent-sounding “Corporate Cannibal” highlights materialism-as-slavery and touches on the growing public condemnation of present-day business practices with its emotionless, zombie-like characterization of the corporate mindset. (“I’m a man-eating machine/ I deal in the market/ Every man, woman and child is a target/ A closet full of faceless, nameless, pay-more-for-less emptiness…”) Because the lyric’s grim confession is also consistent with Jones’ carefully cultivated man-eater persona, though, it also serves as one piece of an album-length exploration into the singer’s own life and its contradictions. On the pulsing and soulful “Williams’ Blood,” she identifies with her maternal bloodline while addressing incongruities between her audacious show-business life and the religious influence of her father, a bishop in the Apostolic church. The track ends with an excerpt from “Amazing Grace” but is prefaced by Jones’ stern announcement, “You can’t save a wretch like me,” a theatrical flourish that heightens the drama but does little to further the album’s overarching theme: the dichotomy between humanity’s highest inclinations and its basest instincts. She ponders this on tracks that alternate personal matters with more universal topics, intertwining the two along the way. 

The sleek “Love You to Life” examines the duality of human nature and asks probing questions like “Could your dark heart be contagious?” (“Between the beginning and the end, you’ll find magnitudes of questions that divide/ Attracted to immorality/ A magnet to immortality…”) Despite the redemption suggested in its title, the track focuses on pride and separation from God in lyrics like: “Your creator is what you’re jealous of.” On the sinister “Devil in My Life,” she questions her own susceptibility to deception. (“I ask myself ‘who am I? Am I forever cast in your mold?’/ Devil in my life/ Treading on thin ice …”) She briefly shows her more vulnerable side on “I’m Crying (Mother’s Tears)” and the appealingly upbeat “Well, Well, Well,” in which Jones considers home and family as a refuge from her vices and the resulting loss of equilibrium. (“Getting high and staying out late/ I’ve a heart that’s big and strong/ And I think I might go home again/ Now I’m losing time and sleep/ And I can’t tell right from wrong/ And I feel like I’m alone again/ Well, well, well—I’m on a tightrope/ Well, well, well”—I think I’m falling…”)

With its emotional currents restrained by Jones’ detached vocal style and steely-eyed posturing, Hurricane often resides near the less turbulent center of the album’s namesake storm system. But when the disc’s icy atmospheres and Jones’ pensive cold front mingle most effectively with its warm, earthy textures and its more penetrating ruminations, Hurricane can exert impressive force.  

Audio Clips

"William's Blood"

"I'm Crying (Mother's Tears)"

"Well Well Well"

"Devil In My Life"