Ambitious, personal albums may be a glut on the market elsewhere, but at Motown they're something new. These, from two of the Corporation's Finest, represent a subversive concept, allowed only to producers the overseerstars of Motown's corporate plantation as long as they didn't get too uppity. Both Gaye and Wonder
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have been relatively independent at Motown, their careers following their own fluctuations outside the mainstream studio trends, but these latest albums are departures even for them.
Both are self-produced and largely self-composed (Wonder working with his wife Syreeta, Gaye with six others including his wife Anna) personal "statements." For the first time on the label, both albums contain printed lyrics. Another unexpected precedent: after all these years. Motown has begun to give credit to its studio musicians, listing 39 of them on Gaye's album and acknowledging for the first time that such people really exist.
Unfortunately, awkwardness easily slipped over in the flow of a song is painfully evident when that song is reduced to printed lines. Although both albums suffer from this over-exposure of lyric stiffness, Gaye's work is much more supple and conversational ultimately smoothing itself out on what is a very fine record while Wonder's is too self-conscious and edges into pretentiousness ("Suffocate the new high Ride the thorny mule that cries 'Dig your grave and step right in'") the recently-developed Curtis Mayfield Syndrome becoming nearly incomprehensible when sung.
This is not Stevie Wonder's first self-produced album he did his last, Signed. Sealed and Delivered. as tight and soul-satisfying as any to have come out of Motown but clearly Where I'm Coming From is an attempt to establish a more completely personal, idiosyncratic style and project it on his own terms. Already one of the most inventive, expressive singers performing today, Stevie apparently wanted an opportunity to loosen up outside the confines of the typical Motown single. But he blew it. Not only are the lyrics sadly undistinguished, but much of the production and arrangement is unusually self-indulgent and cluttered with effects that too often obscure the utter virtuosity of Wonder's singing.
At its worst, in "Do Yourself A Favor" and "I Wanna Talk to You," both more than five minutes, Wonder gets so hung up on exploring this virtuosity that he runs it into the ground. Failing to realize that an extravagant vocal style draws a great deal of its strength from a contrasting, coolly-controlled arrangement which will set it off to greatest effect, Wonder tends to sink everything in thick studio veneer; the use of doubletracking for vocal self-accompaniment is especially overused.
The most successful cuts, "Think of Me as Your Soldier" and "If You Really Love Me," are short, unassuming love songs, pleasant vehicles for the Wonder charm. Here his off-hand intensity, his intimate heavy breathing, his joyous yelps
