Complain all you want about Stevie Wonder taking his sweet time -- ten years of it in this case -- to deliver a new record. On A Time to Love, the soul giant (and notoriously fussy producer) used that go-slow approach where it really counts: in the grooves. The best tracks on this much-superior follow-up to 1995's flabby Conversation Peace reconnect Wonder with a key trait of "Superstition" and much of his storied Seventies output: a rhythm section that keeps to its own sauntering, funky schedule.

Almost half of the fifteen songs recall Wonder at his prime -- they start from a crisp, nothing-fancy backbeat and gather drama as they steamroll along. The opening strut, "If Your Love Can Not Be Moved," which features gospel powerhouse Kim Burrell, gradually swells into cinematic hugeness. "Tell Your Heart I Love You," which sports one of the most addictive refrains Wonder has written since "Master Blaster," works because there's room for the sweeping, pleading melody, which Wonder sings and plays on harmonica, to unwind. The noirish ballad "Moon Blue" inspires dazzling vocal ad-libs from Wonder -- enough to give most Mariah Carey disciples nightmares. And "Positivity," one of two tracks featuring Wonder's daughter Aisha Morris (previously heard splashing in the tub on "Isn't She Lovely"), turns on a tightly wound Jackson 5-style pulse that is the essence of optimism.

Several of the remaining songs are much less satisfying: "Shelter in the Rain," the album's designated hurricane-relief track, is overwrought, and "Passionate Raindrops" and "My Love Is On Fire" are gunked-up clutter. But when Wonder gets a good idea, he instinctively leaves it alone, letting that strong and eternal spirit that animates all his best work shine through, in its own sweet time. (TOM MOON)

Depeche Mode Playing the Angel (Sire/Reprise)

Depeche Mode's unique division of labor has been long established, with each of the three remaining members having a distinct role: Martin Gore writes the songs, Dave Gahan sings them and Andrew Fletcher shows up for photo shoots and cashes the checks. So the biggest change on the Mode's eleventh studio album is that they tinker with that formula. After Gahan recorded a solo album (2003's Paper Monsters) and complained that he wanted to write some of Depeche Mode's material, he ended up with three of the twelve song credits here. Of course, they sound pretty much like Gore's tracks: You don't stay in a band for twenty-five years without learning a few things. Otherwise, the formula remains largely the same, although the group adds some production tricks, dialing down the perv factor and turning up some extra chirps and bloops they haven't used before. Ominous synthesizers and portentous vocals, as always, hold steady. (GAVIN EDWARDS)

Rev Run Distortion (RSMG/Def Jam)

Run-DMC were the valedictorians of the old school of hip-hop, but they never figured out a way to graduate. Their highly touted comeback album, 2001's Crown Royal, was a pallid affair notable for lots of guest stars and the almost total absence of DMC. On this twenty-three-minute disc, Run demonstrates that in 2005, he still has flow and vocal presence -- and almost nothing to say. There's the obligatory tribute to the late DJ Jam Master Jay (built around a clunky sample of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama"); lots of clich?s, like "It's time for the show"; and inanity like "Boom-boom-ditty-ditty-boom-ditty-boom-ditty." Perhaps Run, an ordained minister, felt that rapping about Christianity would be uncommercial; he does it on only one track, "The Way." But a CD of biblical rap would have been vastly more interesting than just tepid updates of the Run-DMC sound; Distortion feels like a doo-wop group trying to add psychedelic guitar solos. (GAVIN EDWARDS)

Ashlee Simpson I Am Me (Geffen)

It could have been the inspiring story of a young, maligned lip-syncer redeemed by a second album that proved she can really sing. Instead, Ashlee Simpson's follow-up is a collection of eleven soulless tunes that fail to even qualify as guilty pleasures. Simpson attempts to channel Gwen Stefani on the faux-funkdafied "L.O.V.E.," warbles through a sapped-out ballad on "Catch Me When I Fall" and even tries to evoke the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O on the pop-funk "Boyfriend." In venturing to offer something for everyone, Simpson offers nothing for anyone. (JENNY ELISCU)

Sound Team Work (Big Orange)

This five-song EP from Austin sextet Sound Team mixes up unassumingly catchy tunes with ramshackle bathing-in-sound atmospherics -- reverb-y keyboards, spiraling guitar lines, layered low-fi fuzz. Sometimes their heartfelt vocals sound like just another element in the mix, but on Work Sound Team channel their noise jones and their formally solid, melody-driven songcraft with more expertise than the messy surfaces let on. (CHRISTIAN HOARD, PETER RELIC)

Silver Jews Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City)

This album of soulful, synth-colored Americana is the first sound out of poet/ singer-songwriter David Berman since he attempted suicide with Xanax and crack after a fierce bout with depression. These ten songs -- with help from Will Oldham and sometime-Jew Stephen Malkmus -- are full of sadness and regret, spiked with absurdist hipster humor. Berman has a gift for lyrics like "Punks in the beerlight, two burnouts in love/I always loved you to the max!" and "Fast cars, fine ass/These things will pass." These are tunes about breakups and God and smoking the gel off a fentanyl patch. But mostly, they're songs about slow recovery, especially at the close of the record, when Berman sings, "There is a place past the blues I never want to see again . . . /Black planet, black freighter, black sea." Here's to sticking around. (ALEX MAR)

ROLLINGSTONE
(posted Oct. 17, 2005)