Patience in Bloomington, MN

Almost immediately after he became an international superstar with 1987's
Faith
,
George Michael
developed a complex that he was not taken seriously as an artist. He was right -- he wasn't being taken seriously, but at the height of their success, mainstream
pop
stars rarely are; it's only after they've been around for a while that critics and audiences alike appreciate the craft behind their best work.
Elton John
and
Madonna
both are
icons who earned good reviews after they proved their lasting power, but
Michael
, for want of a better phrase, didn't have enough patience to wait to be regarded as an artist, not just a
star. So, he followed
with 1990's
Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1
, whose very title was a plea to skeptics to shed their preconceived notions of him and hear the music anew. At the time, it seemed like this was temporary hiccup, a somber exorcism
needed to work through as an artist, but over the years, it's clear that this was the blueprint for his solo career. Not that there have been that many albums since then, of course.
took six years to deliver
Older
, a delay that was initially blamed on a vicious battle with his record company,
Sony
, but its own successor,
Patience
, didn't appear for another eight years, a time which not only had no spats with the label but also saw him re-signing to
. Those long, long separations between albums suggest that
is a painstaking perfectionist in the studio, and
sure sounds like the work of a musician who spent every day of those eight years working on these 14 tracks (12 on the U.S. version; the anti-
Bush
and -
Blair
"Shoot the Dog"
was excised for the American CD, presumably because it would be too controversial, but who knows why the reprise of
"Patience"
was cut).
While there are unifying lyrical and musical themes throughout the album, each track is its own entity, scrubbed, polished, and manicured without regard to how it fits alongside the next. There's an excessive attention to detail to each song, and that tunnel vision means each song runs about a minute or two longer than it should, which ultimately makes
seems twice as long as its actual running time. That's unfortunate because the core of the album is quite good: it's hard not to admire his studiocraft, there's a starkly confessional streak in his writing that's disarmingly direct, and, as an album, it balances the moody
ballads
and sleek neo-
disco
better than
, feeling much brighter than that claustrophobic affair. If there's a lack of incessantly catchy hooks or undeniable rhythms -- in other words, singles as indelible as those on
, or even
Listen Without Prejudice
-- that feels like a conscious decision by
, as if any concession to chart-bound
would cheapen his music and diminish his chances of being taken seriously. They would have lightened the mood of the decidedly somber and portentous
, which is clearly not what
wants, since by stretching out each song and burying his hooks beneath the album's shiny surfaces and preponderance of mid-tempos, he's forcing listeners to work to understand his intentions. For some fans, it's worth the effort, particularly since it's his best album since
(not saying much since it's only his second album of original material since then), but it's hard not to hear it and think that
's ultimate ambitions would be better served if he tightened up and lightened up just a little bit. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine