Roberta Flack is a moving, vibrant performer whose strengths have only occasionally been captured on record. They have almost totally eluded this latest effort, leaving us instead with a rather dismaying catalogue of her weaknesses. Part of the problem is that Miss Flack's dramatic style–the intensity and tension that often gives her such presence and power on stage frequently translates to records as mere heavy-handedness. She has an unfortunate tendency to slow her songs down to a near standstill, holding vocal movement and emphasis to a minimum and producing a flat, barren monotone of emotion. At times this style can be devastating–the feeling is narrowed and sharpened like a knife. Roberta bristles and burns, yes, like "quiet fire"–but give song after song this same deliberate treatment and the fire is slowly smothered.

The whole second side of Quiet Fire succumbs with hardly a gasp of protest. The arrangement of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"–Flack at piano as she is throughout, Ron Carter on bass and a glut of strings–is irrelevant and colorless. Roberta sings almost as if she were dealing with a foreign language she didn't fully understand as if she weren't quite sure where to place the emotional emphasis and she just forgot about it. "To Love Somebody" is drawn out to 6:41 without a single glimmer of inventiveness; boring, oh god, so boring. By the time you get to "Let Them Talk," a sort of numbness has set in which is too bad 'cause here the technique works. Roberta comes across with restrained force, reaching some rich, gently soaring peaks. This is the epitome of her style: strong emotion, held tightly under control the tension between the two forces wraps the song and transforms it. This works especially well within the small space of "Let Them Talk," but fails again in "Sweet Bitter Love," only because the tension dissipates over its more than six minutes.

Side one, although more varied, on the whole fares little better than its reverse. A seven-minute-plus version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" sits at its center, drained of what little life it had, more tedious than one could have imagined. Is this sophisticated supper club music? The arrangement is so understated–quiet piano, several cellos and a boys choir for a slightly religious touch–that the song very nearly disappears. The surrounding cuts sink into this hold, canceled out–almost. "Go Up Moses," written by Roberta Flack, producer Joel Dorn and not-quite-charismatic black activist Jesse ("I Am Somebody") Jackson, retains much of its power, both as a "freedom song" and as a simmering, rather infectious production. Reversing the traditional "Go Down Moses," Roberta, a proud gospel queen, tells her people, to "Let Pharaoh go. You don't need him. ... Pharaoh doesn't want you but he needs you.... Without you there is no Pharaoh, so all you have to do to let him go is let him go." Simplistic maybe–if only it were that easy to divest oneself of an oppressor–but provocative.

"Sunday and Sister Jones" shines as the one true gem, a hard-pressed diamond, on the album. Written by Eugene McDaniels, who provided Roberta with her fine "Reverend Lee," "Sunday and Sister Jones" is a moving love and death story sung with passion and restraint by Miss Flack. This is the Roberta Flack that excites me, the one who has brought me close to tears in concert where has she been keeping herself? The production here is also excellent, especially the horns crying, wailing mourners. Side one closes with "See You Then," a Jim Webb song, that is well nice but minor.

Altogether, it's too depressing, an exercise in lifeless sophistication and dramatic understatement carried to its unfortunate extreme emptiness. It may seem foolish after all this to say I still dig Roberta Flack (she did contribute all her own arrangements here so there's not much excuse), but she's a tough singer when it all works right and someday–you watch–it will. (RS 99)

VINCE ALETTI