Review: SuperHeavy

Super-group. Mixed album.

It was perhaps inevitable that the overlapping styles and strikingly different artists involved in SuperHeavy’s eponymous album would produce a mixed bag, and that is what we get across the 12 tracks here.

Here we have Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, soul singer Joss Stone, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, reggae star Damian Marley and Indian musical giant A.R. Rahman, and one thing that the eclectic nature of those musicians gives the record is a sound (or a series of sounds) which is intriguing. It has to be said that this can be put on in the background and just heard as the results of this experiment are not unpleasant.

However, it must also be said that, at points, the lyrics are really lacking and a more intensive listen to this piece result in a surprisingly dull experience, most notably with the eponymous opening track of the eponymous album, which is as self-indulgent as you would imagine.  We have to wait until tracks four and five (“Satyameva Jayathe” and “One Day One Night”) to find anything diverting.

However, from then on, the sort of stuff which you’d expect from these musicians becomes more frequent. “Never Gonna Change” has a lovely quiet feel to it, like the more acoustically-minded Stones tracks have. “I Can’t Take it No More”, which was soley composed by Jagger, is one for the air-guitarist and though the lyrics are trite, it gets the blood pumping. The real highlight is “I Don’t Mind”, which makes great use of Joss Stone’s voice and is a beautiful, slow, elegiac piece.

There are near horror shows (how on earth did “Beautiful People” come to be written?) and you have to wonder why they chose the innocuous “Miracle Worker” as the single, but there is much to enjoy here even if it isn’t anywhere near a classic. A second album wouldn’t be unwelcome.


SuperHeavy is available on the Polydor label