As a comeback album, Marvin Gaye's Midnight Love is remarkably arrogant: it simply picks up from 1973's Let's Get It On as if only ten minutes, and not a confusing ten years, had elapsed since Gaye hit his commercial peak. But make no mistake: this record, which has become the biggest crossover hit of the singer's career, is a comeback for Gaye, whose last couple of albums, despite their funkster defenders, committed the unpardonable sin of tedium.

Midnight Love is anything but boring. It has the rhythmic tension, melodic delicacy and erotic resilience of Gaye's greatest music, and it extends those attributes by applying contemporary synthesizer gimmickry judiciously and soulfully…. And everything here, including the ribald greeting-card verse of the lyrics, underscores the relentless erotic obsession that's at the core of Gaye's concerns.

But Midnight Love isn't as truly ambitious a record as Gaye's greatest album, What's Going...