O2, Dublin
It’s a given in pop music that once lauded, exciting and creative figures live out their twilight years in a blend of nostalgia and bland new material. Stevie Wonder, who has just turned 60 (which, please God, isn’t even close to the twilight phase), may not have released albums in the past 15 years
that match the energy and verve of his halcyon days in the 1960s and 1970s, but what he has lost in latter-day credibility he has gained in what could be termed fixed perspective.
In other words, the music he has delivered from the early 1980s onwards might be viewed as flaky, even bordering on the banal, but from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s he produced a prodigious body of work whose stature increases with the passing years.
Some of us may gingerly retreat from the likes of Ebony and Ivoryand I Just Called to Say I Love You, but when Wonder goes song travelling and delivers granite-cracking versions of Uptight (Everything's Alright), Living for the City, Higher Ground, For Once in My Life, If You Really Love Meand Superstition, fixed perspective kicks back in and pretty much all is forgiven.
It helps that his band is as empathetic as it is intuitive. The prowess of the 13-piece ensemble of musicians and backing singers augments Wonder’s highly engaging and personable onstage demeanour.
From the top down, though, everything is kept in check. It is rare for the genuine personality of such a major star to come through, and refreshing to see, in this show, an absence of grandstanding or showboating, of lachrymose pleas or false notes.
Such an honest display of musicianship also proves that, ultimately, extravagant circus-style gigs are no more than ego-driven smoke and mirrors, the preserve of nominal rock and pop stars who are all mouth and no trousers.
Smart but minimal stage production notwithstanding, this show was all about the music, and while, occasionally, elastic funk workouts threatened to snap the patience, by the show’s end you knew you were in the presence of someone unique: Stevie Wonder, elder statesman of black music and a master blaster with a peerless back catalogue of classic tracks.
