I Want You

MARVIN GAYE

(Motown)

While not as iconic as What's Going On and Let's Get it On, and without the dirty-laundry backstory of the divorce kiss-off Here, My Dear, I Want You is a terrific piece of the Gaye canon, all smooth and sensual and seductive. With help from producer/songwriter Leon Ware, Gaye crafts gorgeous pillows of stacked sound: strings wafting around sinewy horn solos and chicka-chicka guitar, sultry drum grooves and lushly layered vocals. Gaye's vocal approach here is particularly delicate — health, mental and physical, might have been an issue — almost to the point of being laconic at times. The album's feel stays pretty consistent throughout but never lapses into tedium.

This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...