A contender for the best album of 2011 from super-band Superheavy formed by Damian Marley, Joss Stone, Dave Stewart and Mick Jagger. (AP)
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Superheavy
“Superheavy”
****
What happens when you put Mick Jagger, ex-Eurythmic Dave Stewart, “Slumdog Millionaire” composer A.R. Rahman, reggae’s Damian Marley and Brit soul singer Joss Stone in the studio together? You get “SuperHeavy,” the single best album of 2011.
This all-star collaboration created a collection of brilliant songs in an incredible stylistic mash-up of reggae-inflected pop-rock, with the group’s vocalists taking the lead in round-robin vocal turns.
Jagger gives his best performance in more than a decade — in or outside of the Rolling Stones. He actually sounds “Sticky Fingers” dangerous and degenerate again. This disc also gives Marley a proper platform to claim his father’s crown as the king of reggae, and Joss Stone sings with pipes that sound like a young Aretha Franklin.
Jagger and Marley dominate the vocals on the dozen-song disc, but even so the record is never far from collaboration. The song “One Day One Night” is a great example written by the entire ensemble. It opens with Jagger singing about being in a “rotten cheap hotel with a stale old smell” drinking himself into a stupor. He then yields the mike to Marley, who sings in clipped reggae vocals about the personal hell of getting stuck in a dark room with “one spliff and an empty box of matches.” Mick rocks, Damian skanks and Joss Stone caps the tune off with a frenzy of feral soul.
If you’re looking for Jagger wearing his Rolling Stone colors that’s easiest to hear on the song “Never Gonna Change” co-written with Stewart. It has the same country rock ballad vibe as “Wild Horses.” The current single from the record “Miracle Worker” is a gritty reggae piece, but even better is the bright ’n’ breezy reggae of “Beautiful People” that places Stone in lead vocal position with Jagger and Marley testing their upper registers with backup.
This is the one, must-have, no-risk disc of 2011, even if it’s just to hear Jagger sing a few lines of Rahman’s song “Satyameva Jayate” in Sanskrit.
DOWNLOADS OF THE WEEK
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
“Maniac”
***
On their new record, “Hysterical,” Brooklyn-based alt band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah step furthest from their natural inclination toward shoe-gazing with the falling-out-of-love song “Maniac.”
Despite vocalist Alec Ounsworth singing sad lines like “I miss the way you stare at me, as if I were a memory,” the tune is upbeat pop with a bouncy drum rhythm. Clap Your Hands fans will also applaud the band’s slick horn arrangement that lends this track ’80s-style high-gloss production.
Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga
“The Lady is a Tramp”
*** 1/2
Tony Bennett’s “Duets II,” featuring the maestro in an all-star collection of jazz standards, pairs him with everyone from Aretha Franklin, to the late Amy Winehouse. The record’s best pop moment is when Bennett shares the mike with Lady Gaga for “The Lady Is a Tramp.” In this love ballad Bennett sounds elegant in his croon and Gaga is sassy and swank in her conversational delivery. There’s no doubt that on this duet Lady G. is a tramp for Tony.