Grace Jones // Nightclubbing (Island Records)
Grace Jones eschewed the expectations of her colour by hoovering up the rock, art-pop and new wave palettes like cheap cocaine
As her 2008 release of ‘Hurricane’, a whole album of new work proved, Grace Jones doesn’t have to rely on retrospective. Completely relevant, on point and as experimental as ever, that album reasserted Grace as a creative paragon of fresh ideas. So why a re-mastered, re-release of her 1981 bestseller, ‘Nightclubbing’? 2013 proved to us that we weren’t done with the heavily synthesized, electro-funk of the 1980s; Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ alone corroborates that notion, as does Kavinsky’s ‘OutRun’. While peers of her most prolific period like Whitney Houston and Tina Turner were filling arenas with their knockout soul voices, Grace Jones was putting setting fire to the declaration that suggested she should be following one musical path. Can you imagine Whitney covering Iggy Pop’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’? No, nor me, but Grace Jones eschewed the expectations of her colour by hoovering up the rock, art-pop and new wave palettes like cheap cocaine, to complement her own disco / soul background when she reimagined Iggy’s ‘Nightclubbing’, the album’s title track. Reggae, funk and new wave co-exist on ‘Nightclubbing’ to timeless effect. This reissue includes a collection of rarities, including the previously unreleased version of Gary Numan’s ‘Me! I Disconnect from You’. This album is a must-have for fans of Grace. Or Daft Punk. Or Santigold. Or Hercules and Love Affair. Or… The list is endless. 10/10 Emma R. Garwood
