Like
Seven
, released four years earlier,
Lisa Stansfield
's eighth album bounces from style to style with the singer's deeply impassioned, life-embracing approach a constant feature. Sophisticated pop,
Motown
/
Philadelphia International
-styled retro-soul, a few flavors of house, and even muted go-go and elegant drum'n'bass factor into the material. Most unforeseen is "Hercules," not an update of the
Allen Toussaint
classic but a fiery hero's theme that incorporates the
Bo Diddley
beat, a triumphant horn arrangement from master
Jerry Hey
, and the main riff from
John Carpenter
's "Assault on Precinct 13." A few cuts rate with
Stansfield
's best. The title song sounds like it was designed to fit with smooth early-'80s R&B grooves like
the Mary Jane Girls
' "All Night Long" and
Keni Burke
's "Risin' to the Top." One of the more contemporary numbers, "Billionaire" -- among several songs co-written with career-long partner
Ian Devaney
-- is a confrontational belter delivered with the high levels of flair and agility displayed on
's biggest hits.
The Family Stand
's "Ghetto Heaven" gets a decelerated interpretation, outfitted with a different breakbeat, a reference to
Common
's "Geto Heaven, Pt. 2," and
measuredly coursing from verse to chorus to verse like she has blissfully lost herself in the song. This is the singer's most enjoyable album since her self-titled 1997 work. ~ Andy Kellman