Whatever Smokey Robinson's faults and failures, he's always sounded like no-one else, and on "Where There's Smoke …" at least he has the courage to pursue and renew his own clichés.

The album's centrepiece is, inevitably, his own bid for 1979 disco prominence, a remake of his old classic for the Temptations, "Get Ready." You might say that this extended, bass-propelled version exposes the creeping decadence of popular music, when juxtaposed with the miniaturist tautness of the 1966 original….

Longtime Smokey fans will prefer the throwaway romance of "Share It," with its … shiver-down-the-spine spoken asides, and—particularly—"Cruisin'," a vintage collaboration between Robinson and his steadfast guitarist Marvin Tamplin. "Cruisin'" successfully approximates the old heady, billowing, rapture of "Swept For You Baby" and "You Must Be Love"—although, of course, it lacks the vital innocence of those mid-Sixties beauties….

[Get Robinson's album] only if you can't live without him….

Richard...