After 19 years, Grace Jones finally released a new studio album, and it's a weird one, nostalgic and timeless in equal measure. Her collaborators (including Brian Eno, Tricky, Wendy Lisa, Sly Robbie, Tony Allen, and others) set up instrumental backdrops that explicitly recall not only her own early-'80s albums, but also those albums' influence on the later work of Massive Attack, Tricky, et al. At the same time, Jones' old lyrical persona -- the androgynous cyber-demon who uses scorn as an erotic weapon -- has been largely abandoned; only on Corporate Cannibal does that version of her reappear, atop a track that sounds inspired by Massive Attack's Inertia Creeps. Instead, we get a nostalgic, autobiographical Grace Jones, which is interesting and pretty much totally unexpected. The songs William's Blood and I'm Crying (Mother's Tears) find the now 60-year-old Jones looking back on her childhood in Jamaica, recalling her mother singing in church and comforting her as a nightmare-stricken little girl. Her voice changes on these songs; her accent grows thicker, abandoning the female-Terminator delivery of classic tracks like Nightclubbing and Pull Up to the Bumper in favor of a voice that's like a more gravelly Sister Carol. Of course, age has put a few crinkles into her throaty delivery, which helps when she ramps up the aggression on songs like This Is and the title track (a collaboration with Tricky); she's as scary as ever, when she wants to be. A calculated look back to her glory days and even earlier, Hurricane is possibly Grace Jones' most focused artistic statement and a worthy sequel to her classic early-'80s albums. ~ Phil Freeman, Rovi

1		This Is
2		William's Blood
3		Corporate Cannibal
4		I'm Crying (Mother's Tears)
5		Well Well Well
6		Hurricane
7		Love You to Life
8		Sunset Sunrise
9		Devil in My Life

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