The very first song on [Love Breeze,] Smokey Robinson's best album since his quitting the Miracles, makes you restless while you dance, blue when you kiss. Since Robinson's previous outings as a soloist have been at best incidental music to a public relations campaign for love, who was expecting him suddenly to serve up lyrics and music as eloquent as "Tracks of My Tears"? No PR here…. This is Al Green's map of love: something that makes you do right, do wrong.

Like Green on The Belle Album, Smokey on Love Breeze finds the search for love lonely and wearying….

But where Green paces out the space between Saturday night and Sunday morning, Robinson measures an interpersonal distance. His lyrics fix on the place where fact and dissembling meet—there's the place for touching….

Blues fans will hear Robert Johnson's troubles in Robinson's new songs—Smokey seeks answers...