Music Review: Sade returns with beauty and mystery

CEBU, Philippines - Sade, "Soldier of Love" – Like a long-ago lover not quite forgotten, Sade has returned to steal our hearts with more beautiful, uncategorizable music.

It's been 10 years since her last album, a fatal hiatus for almost any other artist, but just another hibernation for a woman whose disdain for fame only deepens our fascination. Sade's voice sounds unchanged, a unique emotional instrument that conjures visions of rain-streaked windows and windblown streets. Her topics — love, loss, sorrow, strength — remain the same. But her music has still moved forward.

The aggressive title track makes a bold statement, its stabbing drums continuing the bass-heavy direction of her 2000 release, "Lover's Rock." Some of the new album's 10 songs are classic, smooth Sade. But there's also a country twanger, a reggae-tinged ode to fathers who are not husbands, even Sade's first uptempo number since 1992's "Kiss of Life."

This is only the sixth album in 25 years for Helen Folasade Adu, born in her father's Nigeria and raised in her mother's England. She is still working with her original three bandmates: bassist Paul Denman, guitarist and saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, and keyboardist Andrew Hale. She is still mysterious, ageless — and defiant.

"I only make records when I feel I have something to say," Sade says on her Web site. "I'm not interested in releasing music just for the sake of selling something. Sade is not a brand."

That's exactly why you need to buy this album.