We're What's Happening

Amazing Grace. That's what she was, an androgyne with a compelling media presence and self-knowledge years before Annie Lennox. Grace was a model and an actress, like a lot of other beautiful women. She was a singer, like a few of them. Mostly she was a muse and a canvas, an excuse for brilliant designers and producers to try out their most outrageous ideas on a body willing and able to comprehend the art they made together.

She was a striking persona in the highly sexualized culture of the 1970s and the 1980s, one of the Studio 54 divas who also gave good interview on the late night talk shows, and put on elaborate shows of her own. Nightclubbing is the album that shows her off to best effect, and it contains a few songs that are or deserved to be dance pop classics.

Like Marianne Faithfull at the same time, Grace found amazing musicians within the Island record label. Most of the songs here that aren't covers are cowritten by Barry Reynolds; and those covers are clever as well, one by Sting, and the title track, written by Bowie for Iggy Pop originally.

Excellent session musicianship, excellent studio recording, and a clear goal to play to Grace's strengths make this album exceptional (if not perfect; by side two can things can feel a bit thin and repetitive). "Walking in the Rain" is a percolating number tailor-made for Jones, especially when she's "feeling like a woman, looking like a man." "Pull Up to the Bumper" is a truly sexy groove song, mixing in a reggae lilt with a very entendre-ridden ode to a certain kind of love. It's a one-of-a-kind. The title track is a dark slice of urban, druggie angst.

"Demolition Man" is the Sting cover, and he's wrong that his version with the Police (on Ghost in The Machine) is any better than Grace's. She made it robotic and calculated, because that was her style. "Libertango" draws on Piazolla for an intriguing art cabaret tune, and "Feel Up" even tries to let a little cheery optimism into Grace's rather bleak and rigid world.

This album is the closest Grace came, next to the even more beautiful and experimental Slave to the Rhthym, to showing off her abilities as an entertainer.