["Let Me Be Your Clock" is] closely tied to Smokey's Sixties idiom. Cast in the beseeching slow-drag mould of "The Tracks Of My Tears" and "Swept For You Baby", it's firmly in the line of his metaphor songs: "Let me be the pendulum that strikes your chime / For the very first time" surely harks back to the era of "I'm holding you so tight / You know you could've been a handle" and "You're like a broom / I'm like dust in the room"….

The rest of ["Warm Thoughts"], his ninth solo album since leaving the Miracles in 1972, is typically spotty. There's a heavy-handed dance tune ("Heavy On Pride") …; there's a collaboration with Stevie Wonder ("Melody Man") ruined by impossibly twee words; there's a slushy Vegasy torch song ("What's In Your Life For Me"); there's the feature for his wife, Claudette ("Wine, Women & Song"); there's filler ("I Want To Be...