Sade, ‘Soldier of Love’ *** (out of 4)
In a career that operates at the same relaxed pace as her music, Sade doles out carefully considered albums about once a decade these days; “Soldier of Love” (Epic) is her first studio release since the 3 million-selling “Lovers Rock” in 2000. Like its five predecessors dating to 1984, “Soldier of Love” is built on the languid supper club soul of her longtime collaborators, Stuart Matthewman, Paul Denman and Andrew Hale. Saxophones swoon, keyboards trickle or hover, bass lines lurk in the subterranean mist. That sound and Sade’s career have informed both the Brit-soul revival of the ’80s and the neo-soul movement in North America in the ’90s.
The vocalist, born Helen Folasade Adu 51 years ago in Nigeria, sings with the same unhurried air she brought to her iconic debut, “Diamond Life,” but the low-key approach is deceptive. She may sound sultry, as if doing nothing more strenuous than a girl-from-Ipanema stroll on an exotic beach, but melancholy shrouds her every word.
The opening tracks are unusually aggressive in calling for the listener’s attention: A guitar hook curls around the longing of “The Moon and the Sky,” and a thumping martial beat underpins the title song. In the latter, the narrator straps on her helmet, a lonely sentinel waiting “for love to come and turn it all around.” One senses this won’t end well, and hope turns to mourning on the lovely “Morning Bird.” The music glides in its own unhurried space and time, occasionally tweaking other styles: a vague country vibe on “Be That Easy,” a spritz of reggae on “Babyfather,” a rolling trip-hop groove on “Bring Me Home,” slow-burn soul in “In Another Time.”
But mostly “Soldier of Love” presents Sade as a genre unto herself; after 25 years, she remains alluring and subtly rewarding, while still keeping the listener at a safe distance, as if she has even deeper secrets to guard.
Yeasayer, ‘Odd Blood’ ***
This Brooklyn-based quartet made its debut with an excellent 2007 album, “All Hour Cymbals,” that helped create a blueprint for the dominant trends in indie rock the last couple of years. With its exotic rhythms and vocal harmonies and array of textured keyboards it epitomized and presaged a growing fascination in the North American underground with ’80s synth-pop and world music.
The follow-up, “Odd Blood” (Secretly Canadian), consolidates those sonic hallmarks into a series of shapely pop songs. With the backing of a good-size independent label and a bigger recording budget, Yeasayer has made a densely layered, keyboard-heavy album, piling synthesizers (and a few guitars) atop a grid of percolating rhythms. In general there is less experimental flair than on the debut. Instead, there are songs that aspire to anthem status, echoing a host of 3-decade-old bands. In the hands of U2, one could easily imagine the stately “I Remember” or the cascading vocals of “Madder Red” transformed into an echo-laden, stadium-rock singalong.
But most of these love songs don’t get bogged down in sentiment or their own self-seriousness. They aim for the hips as much as the heart, with transparent melodies and propulsive beats drawn from hip-hop and contemporary R&B. The vocals become just another percussive effect on dance floor workouts such as “Rome” and “Mondegreen.” The album aims for pleasure rather than introspection and, most of the time, it hits the mark.
