It's only when I stop dancing and singing all around the room and sit down to think critically about it, that it occurs to me Stevie Wonder's new album may not be the great album of the year. It's certainly the best thing to come out of Motown since Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On and perhaps even more impressive as a personal achievement considering Wonder not only wrote, arranged and produced the entire album but (with the exception of a solo run by ex-Butterfield guitarist Buzzy Feiton on "Superwoman" and a trombone solo by Art Baron on another cut) played every instrument. A multi-tracked one-man band, with Stevie on piano, drums, harmonica, organ, clavichord, clavinet plus the Arp
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and Moog synthesizers with their various attachments (on the synthesizers he is assisted by Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, listed as associate producer). Sounds like an ego extravaganza–and if examined closely
Music of My Mind does bear some of the stretch marks remaining from his last album overreach, the abrasively uneven
Where I'm Coming From. Only this time everything seems to fall quite comfortably within Stevie's grasp and the effect is both satisfying and exciting.
It's satisfying if you're willing to overlook a few flaws, some of which have cropped up in his other recent work. Most would fall under the heading Self - Indulgence: a tendency toward gimmickry that often eludes his fine sense of control. So, for instance, the electronically distorted background voice in the opening cut, "Love Having You Around," goes right past being clever and witty to being merely irritating. The playful finish of the same cut and the spoken portions of "Sweet Little Girl" simply gets too cute. The not-quite-definable distortion that affects the vocal on "Girl Blue," is at first somehow haunting, but then a gnawing distraction. Surprisingly, this indulgence rarely affects the music with the result that Wonder's is one of the very few down-to-earth uses of the synthesizer–no attempts at space music here, no swollen, overripe breaks engulfing two-thirds of the album, only funky, exuberant music of the sort we've come to expect from Stevie Wonder.
"Keep On Running" is a knockout. The cut begins with a kind of ominous tangle of electronic squiggles, piano, nervous cymbal clashes and dark bassy threats as Stevie sings, "Something gonna get you/Something gonna grab you/Something gonna jump out of the bushes and grab you." After two verses and a few anticipatory beats, the song breaks out in earnest, the beat picks up and Stevie repeats, "Keep on running/Keep on running from my love." I can't remember hearing a synthesizer sound so exciting and alive. Later, as the music gets hotter, and Stevie more mock-threatening, a girls' chorus comes in and all build together on a relentless repetition of "Keep on running, running from my love" that takes up the better part of the song's more than six minutes. If you can listen to this sitt
Already a pop veteran at age 22, this was Wonder's first LP masterpiece, a breathtaking exploration of soul, sound and the sonic possibilities of the recording studio. Wonder's use of synthesizers is so natural that you don't notice how avant-garde the album is; using technology to expose his humanity, not cover it up. Surprisingly, "Superwoman" was only a moderate hit.
