Stevie Wonder: Innervisions

The greening of Motown continues apace, with performers who once flourished under the company's autocratic guidelines (the Four Tops, Gladys Knight) seeking success elsewhere while others have been let loose to try and divine the boundaries of their newly-found freedom. Among the latter, Stevie Wonder has become the brightest light of all, his work since Music of My Mind consistently innovative and lustily creative, propelled by a confidence and artistic maturity that only comes through the dogged patience and understanding of day-to-day experience. Innervisions is Wonder's 14th album, his third since fully becoming his own man, and it shows off his talents to luminous advantage. A master stylist and arranger, his music has a grace, a studied balance, that does more than just set off each cut in perfect harmony with its neighbors. Indeed, Innervisions may be as close to a concept album as Stevie will ever produce. Its tracks are coupled by a hovering mist of subdued faith, of a belief in the essential rightness of things; and if he seeks to offer no real solutions (should he?), neither does he allow for any easy outs, any quick glossings of the surface. The themes are simple. Life is tough but life is beautiful; find your own way, but make sure you're not simply playing the fool and kidding yourself. He gently chides the escapism of drugs ('Too High'), as well as the 'Misstra Know-It-All's who wear their ignorance like a shield. He saves his blessings for those who maintain a reverie of the world as it should be, as it inevitably is, the 'Higher Ground' which must never be lost sight of or denied. It's interesting to note here that in the song Wonder directs at the 'Jesus Children of America' (adding transcendental meditators and junkies into the spiritual mix), he merely asks them not to "tell lies." Later, in 'Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing': "Everybody needs a change/A chance to check out the new/But you're the only one to see/The changes you take yourself through." In this sense – and it's to his credit that Wonder's preoccupations with such Siddharthic messages never slide into the blandly predictable – Stevie functions a bit like Curtis Mayfield, aware of his role as a musical and spiritual leader, in that order, but hardly to the point of shrillness. His concern with the real world is all-encompassing, a fact which his blindness has apparently complemented rather than denied. "I'm not one who makes believe," he sings in 'Visions'; "I know that leaves are green," Even when his characters run into crippling obstacles – the young Mississippi boy who's spent his life 'Living for the City', only to arrive at Port Authority and be unjustly thrown in the slammer – he never loses that basic optimism, the ability to once again rise and return to the fray. Musically, this philosophy is blended into nine songs whose depth and range of technical judgement is flawless. Though Stevie plays most everything on the album, instrumentation is held to a careful minimum, centered around electric piano, guitars, a roundhouse rhythm section and a discrete, unobtrusive use of synthesizers. 'Higher Ground' is the single and should notch Wonder his lucky 13th gold certification, though that's not to say any of the other cuts couldn't function on the Hot 100 equally as well. Both 'Living for the City' and 'Jesus Children' rank high on the danceability index, while 'All in Love Is Fair' performs the same painfully exquisite ballad function as 'Blame It on the Sun' played for Talking Book. But the best moment is reserved for Stevie, aurally getting off the bus in 'Living for the City': "Wow," he says, "New York! Just like I pictured it!" An eye for an eye. On Innervisions, Stevie Wonder proves again that he is one of the vital forces in contemporary music.