Rating: * * * *
Sade only makes records when she has something to say. And in this, her band's first album in 10 years, she seems to be saying that she may be a thick-skinned warrior, but she feels just as much as any woman.
The Nigerian-born Brit has been releasing her own music since her first sultry single Your Love is King in 1984. After seven years of hibernation, her band reunited at a studio near her home in the countryside of southeast England in 2008.
Over a series of fortnightly sessions the four-piece sketched out their most ambitious album yet, which was completed midway through 2009.
This sixth studio album is still recognisable as the sultry, relaxing Sade of the previous album, but holds more grit, variety and honest emotion.
From the country western and tribal military nuances of the title song, where Sade and her chorus sing "I am lost but I don't doubt, tall I ride, I have the will to survive," to setting her mournful cry against bare percussion in Morning Bird, the album seems to track Sade's journey from Nigeria to Gloucestershire and every hard place she has been in between.
A collection of thick, curly voices in the reggae-inspired Babyfather contrast with mournful violins in Long Hard Road - which paints a picture of a tired lonely pilgrim - and the lulling waves of humming in the windswept track Bring Me Home.
Sade has always come across as a grounded, spirited and confident woman and a sense of this is even more overwhelming on her latest album. But, just as a warning, it can feel like a preach about inner-love if taken in large doses.
