Merry Clayton of ‘Gimme Shelter’ fame is back with a soaring new album

Merry Clayton

Beautiful Scars

(Motown Gospel ***)

Merry Clayton’s spine-tingling vocal on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is one of the most indelible in rock history, created, as Clayton recounts in 20 Feet From Stardom, during a late-night recording session that had her pairing off with Mick Jagger while wearing a mink coat and curlers in her hair.

That 2013 Oscar-winning documentary finally gave Clayton her due. And then tragedy struck: In 2014, she suffered injuries in a car accident in Los Angeles that resulted in both of her legs being amputated below her knees.

Beautiful Scars is the first album the 72-year-old singer has made since then. Produced by Lou Adler, who guided Clayton’s underappreciated 1970s solo career, it’s a return to the New Orleans-born vocalist’s gospel roots, with a contemporary sheen.

Along with traditional spirituals such as “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” Beautiful Scars matches Clayton’s strong and sublime voice with songwriters who specialize in constructing soft-rock anthems.

Both “Love is a Mighty River,” by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and the title cut, by power-ballad specialist Diane Warren, give Clayton the opportunity to soar heavenward with a big, bombastic celebration of human frailty and indomitable spirit.

Beautiful Scars can get treacly, as in the spoken dialogue between Clayton and her granddaughter that precedes the “Ooh Child Medley.” But more often it’s moving. In a no-holds-barred take on Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” she makes the most of a long-overdue moment, singing her song for us, and for herself.

— Dan DeLuca

Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi

They’re Calling Me Home

(Nonesuch ***)

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi are both impressive multi-instrumentalists and astute historians, and their albums, together and apart, are lessons in musical and cultural exchange.

They’re Calling Me Home is their second collaboration, following 2019′s there is no Other. It grew out of the pandemic: North Carolina’s Giddens and Italy’s Turrisi were each locked down in Ireland in 2020, and they began recording livestreams together, often drawing on folk songs from their deep memories.

The “home” of the title is geographic, ancestral, and mortal, embedded in the selection of old-time North Carolina fiddle tunes, Italian lullabies, gospel hymns, and a pair of death-haunted classics (“O Death” and “Amazing Grace”). To these public-domain songs they add a song that they cowrote, “Avalon,” a song by North Carolina’s Alice Gerrard, “Calling Me Home,” and an instrumental written by Giddens.

The arrangements are minimal: often just one or two instruments and Giddens’ powerful voice, which ranges from the husky depths of “I Shall Not Be Moved” to the sweet heights of “When I Was in My Prime.”

But the album sounds varied and full because Giddens and Turrisi play a striking array of instruments: for Giddens, a wide variety of viola and banjos; for Turrisi, accordion, hand drums, baroque guitar, cello banjo. For some tracks, they draft Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu or Irish pipe player Emer Mayock.

From one perspective, They’re Calling Me Home is a history lesson in cultural cross-pollination. From another, it’s an impressive document of versatile musicianship and a showcase for Giddens’ remarkable vocals.

— Steve Klinge

Another Michael

New Music and Big Pop

(Run for Cover ***)

New Music and Big Pop is a brash title for a mostly subdued debut from Philly trio Another Michael, but it fits the album’s penchant for self-referential moments.

The opener, “New Music,” is a quiet number about sharing songs and seeking renewal. It’s built on a gently picked acoustic guitar and Michael Doherty’s understated falsetto, as are many other songs on the album.

“Big Pop” comes later, and it revels in bright colors and bouncy cadences: “Big pop, lemon drop, sipping the whole way through / Tiptop, circus cop, I’ve got something crazy to tell you.” It’s a catchy song about writing catchy songs, with a wink of twee irony.

Another Michael formed in Albany, N.Y., but relocated to a West Philly house in 2017, and the communal living seems to have filtered into the lyrics, which often touch on friendship and self-definition, and recovering from bad choices.

Doherty’s slightly strained voice scans as sincere and recalls, on the quieter songs, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum.

The tentative quality of “Hone” and “My Day” is alluring. Other songs open up with harmony vocals and electric guitars, and sound more assured and fully realized.

“Row” and “Shaky Cam” strike a balance between the folksiness of “New Music” and the twee-ness of “Big Pop,” ending up on this eclectic album in a sweet spot akin to the Shins.

— Steve Klinge