Album: Smokey Robinson

Food for the Spirit, CNR/LIQUID

It has been many a year since one's heart quickened at the prospect of a Smokey Robinson release like it used to in his Motown pomp, and this sorry offering won't change that, I'm afraid. With Food for the Spirit, Smokey follows the lead of such as Al Green by moving from the secular world of soul to the devotional realm of gospel. "I started this project by writing songs for other artists," he explains. "But as I wrote more songs, the Lord laid it on my heart to record a CD." Maybe it was just too vague a brief, God surely intending Smokey to emulate the sound and spirit of his Motown miracles, rather than the bland keyboard textures and evil-sounding synth-horn stabs that marked (and marred) his Eighties output. Track after track lapses into the kind of pedestrian slush that tries so hard to be inoffensive that it ends up irritating the hell out of you; and while Robinson's blessed tenor is, at its best, the equal of such sweet-voiced gospellers as Al Green, Sam Cooke and the Rev Claude Jeter

It has been many a year since one's heart quickened at the prospect of a Smokey Robinson release like it used to in his Motown pomp, and this sorry offering won't change that, I'm afraid. With Food for the Spirit, Smokey follows the lead of such as Al Green by moving from the secular world of soul to the devotional realm of gospel. "I started this project by writing songs for other artists," he explains. "But as I wrote more songs, the Lord laid it on my heart to record a CD." Maybe it was just too vague a brief, God surely intending Smokey to emulate the sound and spirit of his Motown miracles, rather than the bland keyboard textures and evil-sounding synth-horn stabs that marked (and marred) his Eighties output. Track after track lapses into the kind of pedestrian slush that tries so hard to be inoffensive that it ends up irritating the hell out of you; and while Robinson's blessed tenor is, at its best, the equal of such sweet-voiced gospellers as Al Green, Sam Cooke and the Rev Claude Jeter, it's wasted here on clichéd claptrap, and the more ominous crusading zeal of "We are the Warriors". Worst of all is "Gang Bangin'", a limp critique of gang culture with all the decisive power of being scolded by your maiden aunt. Woeful.