Sade
Love Deluxe

THE REVIEW

Sade's voice is like ivory; it comes from the African land; it is precious and valuable and especially it is painful, it evokes hard and difficult memories to erase.

Sade: she and her group have, in more than 25 years of career, been able to continue on their path without fearing declining popularity, or music that commercializes and adapts; they have stubbornly continued to pray… .

It was in '92 that “Love Deluxe” was released, an “ensemble” of just 9 songs, including the acoustic “Mermaid”, all precious, accompanied by a renewed melancholy mixed with a rougher sound, the precursor of what Massive Attack would later do with “Blue Line”.
It is, however, the voice of Helen Folasade Adu that gives me the famous “breakthrough” (much sought after by Montale), the space-time to escape, to stop time and all its complications; being able to renew one’s thoughts by just listening to a voice and its splendid singing.

“No Ordinary Love” is simply perfect, fitting; fluid; liquid in moving and “mixing” with Sade's voice, which expresses a renewing love; not ORDINARY indeed. “Cherish the Day” is made of a few things, an electronic drum, a distant guitar, and the deep and unreachable voice, which once again manages to be the one and only protagonist, but it is “Pearls” that is the real miracle, one of the most evocative songs I have ever listened to, those melancholic strings in the corner, a melody that unfolds independently of any chorus, and that voice that once again moves; and prays.. Alleluia.. the end shouts; and even for me who is so far from religion; because being an atheist it seems almost impossible to be able to pray; to be able to believe, maybe not in a God, but in something that supports us and makes us so sensitive and ready to grow.

This album, lifts me from moments of crisis, reconnects me to images, to books read, to important people but especially to myself and to the importance of continuing to know myself, to continue to discover myself, through Sade's voice.