This is almost as satisfying a return to form as Sugar Ray Leonard's victory over Marvelous Marvin Hagler and practically as much of an upset.

After all, Stevie's really been on the skids since 1976's Songs In The Key Of Life, and even that wasn't up to the mind-altering troika-plus-one of Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale. Now that was a streak of creativity combined with commercial success the likes of Prince and Michael Jackson still aspire to.

So it is no small praise indeed to say that Characters, Stevland Morris's first effort since 1985's In Square Circle, favorably evokes those halcyon days of ‘Superstition’, ‘You Are The Sunshine Of My Life’ and ‘Living For The City’. In fact, the new LP opener, ‘You Will Know’ is a spitting image of the latter, complete with its landscape of those "using pharmaceutical extractions to find the paradise" and "single parent(s) trying to raise their children." It's not surprising to discover that a number of the tracks on Characters – my guess is ‘With Each Beat Of My Heart’ and ‘Cryin' Through The Night’, with the last-named sounding much like ‘Sunshine Of My Life’ – have been plucked from Stevie's supposed storehouse of half-formed song ideas and demos. Whatever the case, they are timeless Stevie Wonder ballads that resonate emotionally with our memories of other, warmly familiar numbers from the past.

Characters is the first Stevie Wonder album in recent memory which arrived without both fanfare and frustration on the part of Motown over delays by its perfectionist genius. The two years between In Square Circle and the new LP are downright miniscule compared to the five-year wait which separated the former from its predecessor, 1980's Hotter Than July. The lowered expectations result in a more ready acceptance of Characters' relaxed nature, while the album's concept of shifting masks and personal identities is a far more effective frame than In Square Circle's abstract equations. In fact, the lilting township shuffle of ‘Dark 'n Lovely’ and the playful funk of the first single, ‘Skeletons’, can't hide the fact Stevie's laying some heavy statements on us about apartheid and government interference with personal liberties, respectively. This is a welcome return to the old Wonder turf of hope and despair existing side by side against a decaying but colorful urban backdrop.

As prolific as Stevie Wonder is, it's a crime the guy doesn't release at least a record a year. Recently, Stevie announced that Characters would be the first of a proposed trilogy of records dealing with man's self-image and conflicting roles which would take him into the next decade. Like Sugar Ray, Stevie Wonder has come back to prove he's still capable of delivering a knockout punch. He might not dazzle technically like he used to, for now, Stevie Wonder prefers effortlessly employing the tools of his trade to create something more important than mere electronic wizardry. On ‘With Each Beat Of My Heart’, he incorporates his own heartbeat by miking it and using it in the mix of the song, and that's getting closer to the point of Characters. Whether he's jiving with Michael Jackson on the duet ‘Get It’ or wrestling with the ghost of Prince on a one-man effort like ‘Galaxy Paradise’, Stevie Wonder's still the class of the (heavy) weight division. The man has returned to reclaim his crossover throne. And not a moment too soon...