Stevie has been a little boring on the ears for awhile now, but some glowing press about his new CD has me 'wondering' if I should listen up.
Stevie Wonder's 'Love' is worth the wait by Renee Graham, Boston Globe Staff - ''A Time to Love" is Stevie Wonder's first studio album since 1995's ''Conversation Peace," though for much of this year it seemed as if the wait might be even longer....Comparable to 1985's ''In Square Circle," ''A Time for Love" is an enjoyable album that should be judged on its own merits. No, it doesn't compare with Wonder's 1970s masterpieces such as ''Innervisions," ''Talking Book," and ''Songs in the Key of Life." Then again, little else produced by anyone in the last three decades does. - complete review
STEVIE WONDER IN LA TIMES Wonder's hear and tell for the press - Stevie Wonder stages a listening party for his new album to prove he is a figure of the present. by Geoff Boucher LA Times Staff Writer - It's an indelicate question to ask: Does a new Stevie Wonder album really matter? .....The new album is a mix of the "different" Stevie Wonders. "Passionate Raindrops" and "Can't Imagine Love Without You" fall in line with the sounds of his more polished recent hits. "Please Don't Hurt My Baby" is a sharp-edged groove about an infidelity that threatens to capsize a husband's home life, and if it sounds like a throwback to the smokestack rhythms of the old days, there's good reason. - complete article
THE WONDER STUFF by Ben Greenman (The New Yorker) - Stevie Wonder will probably never again have the definitive cultural authority he had in 1976, when he released “Songs in the Key of Life.” .....Wonder has always insisted, with the bravery and naïveté of a great artist, on engaging every aspect of the world around him, both politically and emotionally. This can expose his flaws, which range from minor sententiousness to major sentimentality, but his gaudiest excesses are kept in check this time out. “Please Don’t Hurt My Baby” wraps a snaky, viciously funky synth line around a sharply sung tale of infidelity and tattling; it’s like “O.P.P.” with consequences. “Positivity,” goofy, upbeat, and highly prolix, takes its song title from Prince, just minutes after Prince donates a guitar part on “So What the Fuss.” Elsewhere, on melancholy ballads like “Passionate Raindrops” and “Shelter in the Rain,” the forecast is less optimistic. The talk of weather isn’t so precipitate: Wonder, who moves freely between rock, pop, soul, funk, jazz, and Tin Pan Alley, has always been a man for all seasons, more so than any other act except maybe the Beatles. But while the Beatles could appear to divide up their assets among four distinct personalities—cynical John, romantic Paul, spiritual George, clownish Ringo—Wonder has to do it himself: all the parts, all the moods. - complete article
Rolling Stone Magazine review by Tom Moon - Complain all you want about Stevie Wonder taking his sweet time -- ten years of it in this case -- to deliver a new record. On A Time to Love, the soul giant (and notoriously fussy producer) used that go-slow approach where it really counts: in the grooves. The best tracks on this much-superior follow-up to 1995's flabby Conversation Peace reconnect Wonder with a key trait of "Superstition" and much of his storied Seventies output: a rhythm section that keeps to its own sauntering, funky schedule. - complete review
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