There's one hell of a shadow hanging over Ziggy Marley, and it's a testament to the beauty and strength of Conscious Party that instead of being an object of morbid fascination, this album is one of the brightest, most life-affirming records in recent memory. Ziggy's grittily pretty voice is only the most obvious part of his musical inheritance from his father. The album's title is fitting because Ziggy's songs – like those of Bob Marley – are, for all their spiritual and political poignancy, ultimately celebratory.

Although Ziggy's singing voice is eerily reminiscent of his father's, he has quickly discovered his own songwriting voice. And Conscious Party suggests that the nineteen-year-old is wise beyond his years. "Tomorrow People" – the infectious first single from the album – is a knowing warning to those who forget their roots ("If you don't know your past," Ziggy sings, "you don't know your future"). "Lee and Molly," which features some tasty guitar work from Earl "Chinna" Smith and Keith Richards, is the catchiest song about an interracial relationship since the Stories' "Brother Louie." Even Conscious Party's most straightforward love song, the sunny "New Love," comes complete with a veiled threat ("New love is like the sun rising over the mountaintop/And if you burn me, then I'll burn you back"). And on the album's final and most powerful track, "Dreams of Home," Marley has crafted a song that is about both his search for a holy land and the universal longing of all of us who still haven't found what we're looking for.

Conscious Party may also be the best-sounding reggae album you'll ever hear; the producers, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, have given Ziggy and the band an aural punch that is both pleasantly high-tech and appropriately rootsy. But in the end, what makes the album so exciting is not its sonic strength but the astonishing force of Marley's redemption songs. (RS 523)

DAVID WILD