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RECORDINGS VIEW; With a Quiet Empathy, Sade Creates Small Gems

By STEPHEN HOLDENOCT. 25, 1992

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Refined understatement is so rare in mainstream pop music that it is easily mistaken for blandness. That's one reason why Sade, the English pop-soul singer and songwriter, is often dismissed as a cool, remote symbol of jet-set ennui.

The 33-year-old singer exudes a calm self-containment that contrasts sharply with the supposedly more authentic gospel- and rock-driven exuberance of soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. But while Sade possesses a soul singer's rhythmic intuitiveness, she has always favored reflection over aggression and pastel shades over bold musical colors. And her smoky, vibratoless voice, with its echoes of Astrud Gilberto, Julie London and the young Nina Simone, evokes the high-gloss nightclub ambiance of a pre-soul music era.

Sade's "Love Deluxe" (Epic ET 53179; CD and cassette), which will be released this week, contains nothing that is likely to change the casual listener's impressions of her musical personality. But those who immerse themselves in the album, her first in four years, should discover a depth and passion that have always existed just below the surface, along with an expanded social consciousness.

In a pop climate obsessed with changing sounds and the language of the street, Sade has shown herself to be a pop classicist more interested in creating a durable body of work than in keeping up. Her four albums, despite minor differences, cohere stylistically.

Their consistency owes much to the fact that Sade has recorded, performed and written songs with the same band -- Andrew Hale (keyboards), Stuart Matthewman (guitars and saxophone) and Paul S. Denman (bass) -- for the last eight years. The sound they have created partakes heavily of early-70's soul music influences, most notably Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, but is more intimate and sophisticated.

On "Love Deluxe," Sade shows that intimacy can be applied to social concerns as well as personal reflections. "Pearls," the album's most remarkable song, contemplates a tragedy so horrific that it is almost impossible for a pop song to address it without seeming trite and smug. "There is a woman in Somalia/ Scraping for pearls on the roadside," she begins. "There's a force stronger than nature/ Keeps her will alive."

With a quiet, prayerful empathy, Sade imagines the struggle of someone who is reduced to feeding her children by scavenging for kernels of grain that fall from the back of a relief truck. Contemplating the woman's desperation, the singer mocks her own memories of physical discomfort by offering a ludicrous comparison: "And it hurts like brand new shoes." The song's most chilling moment comes when Sade forsakes her customary reserve to cry two sustained "hallelujahs," her voice silhouetted by subdued strings and solo cello. "Pearls" succeeds because it isn't a protest song but a hymn of praise.

It is not the only song on "Love Deluxe" to address a social ill. In a completely different groove, "Feel No Pain," a catchy funk song, examines unemployment among blacks, asks for help and predicts tragedy if none arrives.

But like Sade's three earlier albums, "Love Deluxe" focuses primarily on relationships. The best songs find fresh images for expressing time-honored sentiments and placing them in settings that distill particular moods with a special intensity. "Kiss of Life," a quietly soaring love song, imagines two people brought together by an angel who "built a bridge" between their hearts. The melody for this ecstatic murmur of gratitude arches seamlessly over a bed of glistening keyboards flecked with saxophone and guitar.

"No Ordinary Love," the first single to be released from the album, explores the flip side of that joy, as the narrator pleads for the continuation of a relationship that has nearly run its course. Ominous plucked bass and guitar figures rise up against the sparkling keyboards to suggest an obsessive struggle to maintain emotional equilibrium in the face of a hopeless situation. Almost as strong is "Bullet Proof Soul," which uses the image of being hit by a slow bullet to suggest a delayed awakening to a lover's betrayal. But instead of lamenting the situation, Sade warns, "I came in like a lamb/ But I intend to leave like a lion."

In the album's weaker songs -- "Cherish the Day," "Like a Tattoo," "I Couldn't Love You More" and the instrumental "Mermaid" -- reflection tilts toward stasis. Melodically, the songs don't go anywhere in particular, and the textures lack the depth and subtlety of the more polished songs. But what holds interest is Sade's pensive, emotionally centered singing. Even here, she turns the sentiments of her lyrics toward the light as if examining the facets of a jewel.

The key to Sade's music is an intricately woven texture in which the voice and instrumentation seem to almost breathe together and create a mood that is as fluent as it is palpable. Sade's best music doesn't give listeners the impression of following a structured song so much as being caught up in a musical spell. The musical elements bubble up, appear and fade, determined by the emotional chemistry of the moment.

It is much the same effect that the pop-soul singer Luther Vandross achieves on his records in a grander and more operatic way. Not coincidentally, his records, like Sade's, take early-70's pop-soul as a stylistic starting point. But where Vandross builds pop-soul standards into quasi-operatic suites, Sade has remained content to create smaller gems of mood.

The best of them convey the language of the heart in a voice that speaks without apology but also without hype. The understanding and honesty they convey is so distilled it might even be called wisdom.

A version of this review appears in print on October 25, 1992, on Page 2002026 of the National edition with the headline: RECORDINGS VIEW; With a Quiet Empathy, Sade Creates Small Gems. 

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