"What are you listening to right now?" thread | Page 623 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

So it seems that all those solar references and natural-world imagery sprinkled throughout his superlative work this decade have come to a surprising/logical conclusion: A soundtrack to a nature documentary turned into a kind of concept album (another double) about plants! As Wikipedia sez:

Wonder created the film score by having Michael Braun, the film’s producer, describe each visual image in detail, while the sound engineer, Gary Olazabal, specified the length of a passage. This information was processed to a four-track tape (with the film’s sound on one of the tracks), leaving Wonder space to add his own musical accompaniment. Wonder attempted to translate the complex information of the book and film into song lyrics. [1]

Only 10 titles (out of 20) have English-language lyrics; most of the rest is thematically-titled instrumentals  (“Tree”, “The First Garden”), with Stevie alone going full prog, even approaching New Age fuzak, with periodic rainforest/birds/weather effects. (The cover art appropriately abandons the usual brownish tones for two shades of green; additionally, for the only time since “Eivets Rednow”, Wonder is entirely absent. The illustration and lettering is raised, like the braille text spelling “Talking Book” on that 1972 landmark.) Always technologically current, Stevie introduces two cutting-edge innovations to the world: a digital sampling keyboard, and digital recording; this is apparently pop music’s second-ever digitally recorded release. As well, he’s still got his Yamaha “Dream Machine”. (He’s no longer its sole user: John Paul Jones employs it frequently on the recently-released In Through the Out Door; as with Stevie, Led Zeppelin’s new album is their first since 1976.) While written mostly by Stevie Wonder, a couple of lyrics were contributed by former wife Syreeta Wright and guitarist Michael Sembello. Text is overgrown with botany; references to flowers, seeds, and trees are in every song, including the ones sung by guest vocalists in Japanese or Senegalese; and sometimes the flowers and seeds even sing for themselves. The words aren’t appreciably more awkward than usual; still, some of the album’s best vocal hooks are mere “La la las” (or especially “Doo-doo-doo DOO doo-doo doo-doo”. A very curious choice for a followup to his Bicentennial-year smash, “…Plants” predictably sold poorly (tho single “Send One Your Love” went Top Ten) and wasn’t critically well-received. There’s a shortage of fast tempos on this album; several tracks have no rhythm at all. It’s subtle, and occasionally a little too much like sonic wallpaper, and it seems a longer listen than “Key” despite being 15 minutes shorter…but there are many moments of great beauty, a few pockets of energy, some world-music travelogue, and a bit of humour. And it’s dismaying at first, but give it time, it’s a grower (yeah I made a pun.) Here’s what we got:

Side One. “Earth’s Creation” begins with Stevie at his Yamaha synthesizer, doomy-sounding sci-fi chords backed with tympani; Michael Sembello adds a slow-burning molten lead guitar. “The First Garden” follows; a minor-key harmonica instrumental over synth strings and music-box piano. Next is “Voyage To India”, which adds some George Harrison ragaisms to the mix; it’s the first taste of the internationalisms of the album. Birdsong and/or water sounds link these initial three into a suite; and we have our first song, a piano/acoustic guitar ballad. “Same Old Story” pays tribute to botanical-science giants Jagadish Chandra Bose and George Washington Carver, who proposed that plants have thoughts & feelings just like us. “Venus’ Flytrap & the Bug” finds an insect-voiced Stevie falling prey to the juicy-looking but deadly prey (“I’m trapped in your love!”); amusingly, it’s set to suave, seductive lounge-jazz. The brief “Ai No, Sono” is Japanese folk music backing children; they sing of a “love-filled garden” in their native tongue, and the side is over. 

Side Two begins with a children’s bedtime story on a cold winter night and a little picturesque instrumental depicting the change of “Seasons”; and then, as refreshing as the arrival of spring itself, we finally have a full drum kit and R&B groove, Wonder employs his soft, high breathy mode to play Pan Himself in the luscious midtempo “Flower Power,” with lyrics by Michael Sembello. Then, for some reason, champagne is poured, and two Spanish lovers converse inaudibly throughout the redundant “Send One Your Love (Instrumental)”. The first disc closes on a high (and high BPM rate) with “Race Babbling”, nine minutes of apocalyptic futurist electro-disco-whatever. “This world is moving much too fast/The end’s unravelling…Man’s production/Life’s corruption/World destruction/Help me people/Save you people…” warns Stevie, in the electronically-warped voice of the seed (that is a star). “You need us/We don’t need you.” The synth solo lines anticipate “Rockit” (and Pink Floyd’s forthcoming “Run Like Hell”), and Syreeta Wright guests for a verse. It’s “a bop,” as the young punks say. (Get off my lawn, grass has feelings too!) End of Side Two. 

Side Three, almost entirely vocal, and we have the actual “Send One Your Love” (“…with a dozen roses/Make sure that she knows it/With a flower from your heart…”) – no way is Stevie not gonna write at least one surefire hit single; it peaked at #7 just as the new decade began (behind such giants as Rupert Holmes and the Boomtown Rats). Another, more carefree la-la-la-la-love song, “Outside My Window” finds our auteur falling in love with the flower itself; firmly planted and thus unable to leave him. That suggestion of loss deepens in the harpsichord-and-acoustic bass led-“Black Orchid”, possibly a tribute to an impoverished schoolteacher; actually, the lyrics are a bit hard for me to parse, but earth/stars/infinity do show up, for conceptual continuity’s sake. “Ecclesiastes” is an organ-heavy kind of funeral march, and a few seconds of research tells me that the Ol’ Testament book in question is the source of that popular “For every thing there is a season…” quote, so I’m going with that as the relevent subtext. “Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye” is Senegalese for “A Seed’s A Star, A Star’s A Seed”, and guests musicians Ibraham Camara and Lamine Konté (plus some crickets joining in) create themselves a nice little kora-and-percussion track (in ¾ time!) to sing it over. The vocal spotlight is again relinquished to Syreeta for her own original, which finds her wishing she could “Come Back as a Flower” (“…to spread the sweetness of love”); her timbre is petal-delicate. End of Side three.

Final side begins with excited crowd sounds and conflicting duo-lingual stage introductions: Stevie and band live in concert, escaping the terrarium of studio sound. “A Seed’s A Star/Tree Medley,” written especially for the Senegalese twice-a-century Festival of Po Tolo, is a Santana-like timbale-rocker with some seriously SICK soul-shouts from our leader, plus a bit more vocoder. Crowd cheers, then back to the studio(s). The mournful title cut is a lament for we hubristic humans, we mediocrities who “…stomp, cut, drown or burn,” and more cosmic words telling of “some who believe/Antennas are their leaves/That spans beyond our galaxy.”) This is the final vocal on the album; having eased us into the LP with 13 minutes of instrumental music on three tracks, Stevie now offers a further 13 on two tracks to take us out, bringing the album full-circle, like the changing seasons oft-referenced throughout. “Tree” has a theme that slowly grows, beginning with a tiny piano, from which multiple synthesizer lines sprout and grow, and grow, indifferent to the birdcalls and sounds of thunderstorms (and a few cymbal-clashes), until they’re soaring over us all. And finally, “Finale”, the figurative closing credits, as Stevie takes all of the preceding musical themes and whips ‘em into a kind of seven-minute underture/medley. Finish.

So: Very unusual and ambitious album, very divisive, and much of it probably sounded more astonishing in 1979, when sampled sounds were in their infancy, which makes it hard to review in a vacuum. Altogether: ultimately enjoyable and very interesting, with many great (and a couple of un-great) moments. (Presumably, seeing the images that are meant to accompany the sounds would provide more context, and possibly a new appreciation.)  If I personally find it his least engaging album since 1971, blame it on my relative indifference to instrumental sounds-without-drumbeats to kick it along; and to the preponderance of balladic material. As an attempted climax to a triumphant decade’s worth of work, it’s an uncanny anomaly rather than the dramatic exclamation point it might’ve been. 

Next: More of those changing seasons: A new decade and Hotter Than July.