Ian McDonald - Smokey Robinson: Quiet Storm lyrics

How much sugar do you take? Smokey Robinson has soft-shoe-shuffled the thin line between the shiveringly intimate and the shudderingly sentimental for nigh on fifteen years – and, if you've never been prepared to court a surfeit of sweetness in order to savour the bonbon bon-mots of this poet of the close-up zone, you may find yourself spluttering for a brown ale at the mere taste of Smokey's cool-of-the-evening co*ktails. (Ouch. This stuff is catching). In the case of Quiet Storm you'd be perfectly within your rights to request a stomach-pump for the duration of at least half the programme. When the creator of 'Going To A-Go-Go' gets chumsy-wumsy with Michel Legrand to produce saccharine drivel like 'Happy' (the Love Theme from Lady Sings The Blues no less), it's time to cease seconding that emotion and start talking about his degeneration. But we've been through all this several times – each time he or his ex-group release a new album in fact – so let's cancel the usual reservations (even though they still apply) and sort out what survives the ever increasing avalanche from Mr. Robinson's own private sugar-mountain. Namely: 'Baby That's Backatcha' (the U.S. single), 'Love Letters', and 'Coincidentally' – all, significantly, up-tempo numbers. The slightly effete instrumentation – saliently, flute and skylarking synthesizer – works to the detriment of all three, but Smokey's delivery evens the score and generally speaking they hit their discreet light-blue groove just right. 'Happy', 'Quiet Storm', 'The Agony and The Ecstasy' – these are only for those who feel Barbra Streisand to be central to their musical universe. (Fringe NME readers may delete Streisand and instate Roberta Flack; it all simmers down to the same thing eventually). 'Wedding Song' falls midway between the acceptable and the rejectable by virtue of its attractive melody and off-putting lyrics, which revolve around the occasion of Jermaine Jackson's conjoinment with Hazel Joy Berry a couple of years backatcha. Wish The Miracles had been here – a harmony is sobbed for. Those linking sound-effects are the only other-major drag. Newcomers may need some lyric litmus, so how's about: I feel like a love letter that you/Pencilled into your life forever/And then decided to erase. Or: Fancy bumping into you right outside your apartment door/You're the last person that I expected I might see. No? Ah well – be off with you back to your Blue Oyster Cult then, and let me be a slob in peace. Also, if anybody has a line on how to develop a special stylus that automatically skips schmaltzers, give me a ring. I need one for my Delfonics' Greatest Hits, you know...?