Caught in the Carousel

Sade

Soldier of Love

Sade

There was a moment at the tail end of the last decade when it felt good to look out onto the horizon again. You had to catch the moment at the right time because when you went back to it again, it was gone. I'm speaking of the leaked video of Sade's "Soldier of Love," from the album of the same name. There was no point in bookmarking that page because when you went back it was taken down from YouTube. But for the time it was there, available, it was quite a sight to see that great beauty towering over the darkest of landscapes. The song, with its rhythmic military drum beats, matched the mood of our times. And then the voice arrived, darker, wearier than we'd ever heard it. But also resilient as if to implicate the decade's materialism and self-induced ignorance that allowed wars to rage on: "I've lost the use of my heart/But I'm still alive."

So imagine the great anticipation for the first full album by a band that makes Kate Bush seem prolific. Soldier of Love is the band's first album in ten years, with Sade herself still front and center. If the first single and video seemed a serious departure, imagine the album cover. The idea of one of the world's great beauties turning her back to the camera seemed to promise the anger that simmers under the title track. What became clear, rather soon, was that the pose isn't so much a statement as it is a Still Life. For the truth of the matter is this: Soldier of Love may very well end up being one of the biggest-selling albums of the year, but even though 2010 is still a pup, I can't imagine a more disappointing album for the rest of the year. That doesn't necessarily mean that the album is bad or even mediocre, but rather it doesn't seem to account for the ten years between it and Lovers Rock.

Sade

What is most disconcerting about the album is how similar most of the tracks sound. And how slow they are, often lugubrious. To have fallen in love with the band's Diamond Life, Stronger Than Pride, Love Deluxe or Lovers Rock was to know each album's song the minute the chords began. As for the band's masterpiece Promise (one of the true great albums of the 1980's without an identifiably 80's sound) the songs were so strongly written and engaging there came a time when the first chords of each song were in your head just thinking about when you would next get the chance to listen to the album. On Soldier of Love there is a sense that one has to only listen to a few tracks to count the album as listened-to. "Skin," like the title track, offers some sorely needed beats and pop, and "In Another Time" offers the most vulnerable Sade vocals to date. Otherwise "The Moon and the Sky," "Long Hard Road," "Be That Easy," "Bring Me Home," and "The Safest Place" are for the most part interchangeable, musically and lyrically.

One wouldn't complain so much if the thematically-interchangeable lyrics had shown the continued growth a strong songwriter. But consider these two examples: "I could aim but I could not fire/Got a bullet to spare to kill my desire," from 1985's "War of the Hearts," and "When I found out this love's undone/It was like a gun" from 2010's "Skin." This, I'm afraid, is the opposite of progress.

Sade

And this is a huge disappointment because the R&B field has become so gloss and bling that people have accorded Beyoncé royalty status. The excitement that first built in late 2009 was the knowledge that here was Helen Folsade Adu coming into the picture at 51, and with a single look capable of reducing all the Beyoncés and Ke$has and Fergies and Rihannas and Ciaras to serfs in the beauty kingdom. And then there is the voice none of these women can compete with. It is one of the most idiosyncratic and sensuous voices of all time. Like Shirley Horn before her, Sade has fooled many into thinking she is all about husky whisperings and throaty purrs. But to hear Sade live, in concert, singing her best song, her masterful torch "Is It a Crime?" there's no doubt that she has the pipes. But again, she rarely uses it to her or the band's advantage this time around.

If the title track had hinted at a new avenue musically, the album's finest moment comes in the regrettably-title "Morning Bird." Everything that has made Sade an Artist of the Highest Order is here: a haunting melody and spare lyrics that mesh so artfully with her voice that the resulting despair is impossible to shake. "You are the morning bird who sang me into life," she sings against a quietly-strong piano and the rumor of a cello. "You are the blood of me," she continues before delivering her finest lyric of the album: "the harvest of my dreams." A few moments later, at 2:47, the slight declension of the piano is the majestic cap to this searing ballad which lingers long after the album has been played, and which may very well be the band's finest balled in its 25+ year career.

Sade

And it is a career that has only given us six studio albums, each one taking longer than the previous to come forth. It has long been known that Sade is a very private person, feeling no need to record for any reason other than her own. Her albums sell like ponchos on Noah's Ark (over 50 million to date). Her life is her own, she doesn't seem to care at all about red carpets or working with Jay-Z (thank God for that) or showing up to re-record the well-intentioned but awful "We Are the World" (a song that was such treacle the first time around). One gets the sense that the request to stand on risers next to The Jonas Brothers, a Pussycat Doll, Jamie Foxx, Celine Dion and Justin Bieber would be a lot more T-Painful than just cutting a handsome check to Medecines san Frontieres. And in this age of overexposure, it is admirable for an artist of such worldwide relevance to simply check in now and then. One just hopes that the next time Sade checks in, she'll have a lot more to say.

Sade

—Thomas Cooney