Stevie Wonder's latest album, A Time to Love, is not the comeback much of the music press has been trumpeting it as. But when one takes into account the schmaltz Wonder has been releasing for the past twenty years, and the consistent brilliance he maintained throughout the entirety of the seventies, it is understandable that people are getting excited about a Stevie Wonder album that at least has some grit to it.
Unfortunately, this album's artistic grit is balanced out by equal parts radio-light garbage. For each memorable track with a deep groove to call its own, there's a lightweight, overproduced ballad or funk jam to make things boring.
The presence of so many low points is really quite a shame, because A Time to Love's highlights are deserving of a much stronger album. Things start off with the killer blast of 'If Your Love Cannot Be Moved,' an African tribal/funk-stomp number that recalls the innovation of his mid-career output while creating a tone and feel that is wholly its own. The next few songs are similarly impressive: 'Sweetest Somebody I Know' contains the quiet beauty of his classic 'Visions,' and 'Moon Blue' is the rare ballad that successfully walks the line between sugar-coated production and affecting restraint.
The first sign of danger arrives with 'From the Bottom of My Heart,' which begins with a promising hook reminiscent of Wonder's smash-hit 'Isn't She Lovely,' but is ruined by the repetition of the junior high-esque chorus, 'From the bottom of my heart, I love you.' Wonder is a better lyricist than this trite sentiment would lead one to believe; in fact, the album's closer 'A Call to Love in a World of Hate and Self-Destruction' demonstrates this.
That dichotomy between innovation and radio-ready repetition is part of what makes A Time to Love such a confusing album. Half the songs seem to be written by someone testing the limits of popular music's genres, while the rest seem to come from a crooner happy to churn out light funk and filler ballads, as long as they'll sell records.
The fact that this album is host to songs of such varying quality is also what makes it the best summation of his career to date, exemplifying the many sides of Stevie Wonder more than any of his other records have, save greatest hits packages.
A Time to Love boasts in equal parts the genre-bending experimentation that brought Wonder to fame in the seventies as well as the adult contemporary lameness that characterized his career thereafter.
Those who have been waiting for the triumphant return of the Wonder of the seventies, a musical genius overflowing with ideas that never fit into one or two genres, will happily soak up the album's high points, but those not familiar with or converted to Wonder's eclectic output are advised to avoid A Time to Love and seek out one of the numerous albums'Talking Book, Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life'that made him famous.
