Higher powers

M People's Testify

by Michael Freedberg

What fans really want from the British dance-music quartet M People is a new studio CD, all new material. Instead, with Testify (Sony) we get a compilation of the act's two previous CDs plus a mere two new songs, "Dreaming" and "Testify." Is this enough to sustain the group's status as current dance music's most soulful performers?

Perhaps. "Testify" is a sumptuous ballad, reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys in both subject matter and sensitivity, in which is celebrated a love between "soulmates": "Born to kiss/A little tenderness." Inasmuch as Pet Shop Boy ballads -- with their romantic generosity and melodic serenity, so unlike the cautious winks and lonely horniness that prevail in the new-jack world -- are much needed in today's pop music, "Testify" is more than welcome. Heather Small's rich, deep, earth-mama contralto plushes and envelops the listener: she is on and in you, a velvet presence strong to the shoulder. Three minutes of her melisma are enough to take you; if not, then three minutes more of her singing the high-rolling lustfulness of "Dreaming" (an easy interlude of dance bliss) and you will not know where or who you were before the music started.

This happy oblivion comes with supporting music, too, chiefly through saxophonist Mike Pickering, percussionist Shovell, and bassist Mike Heard. It's jazzy music grounded in spiky, garage-style house beats, a light touch that for the most part harks directly back to classic disco. But the group's music also imports aspects of the ethereal jazz created a dozen years ago by Sade and her similarly styled band. And though Sade was the purer singer, Heather Small packs much more punch -- her strength is almost muscular. Where Sade floated across the stage, Small leans mightily on a listener, pushing and pressing. Sade's singing mirrored her music; Small dominates hers. And Small does it with a consummate grace and polish far beyond the punchy crudities of new jack and jill. She's every bit a lady even when rising strong, flexing her soul's biceps.

Since no one in English-language pop music has anything like Small's powerful, direct-to-the-heartstrings glamor -- no, not even Erykah Badu, all ego and feline in the manner of Nina Simone -- it perhaps doesn't matter that M People's third CD has so little of the new in it. Who wouldn't want to hear the raucous jump-for-joy in "Angel St." again, with its message of "gonna taste my soul food" sexual banqueting and its click-your-heels beat? Or "Fantasy Island," a sentimental, '70s-style soul dance in which Small oohs and purrs as she calls all the world to gather in dance embrace? Or "Just for You," a solemn love dedication full of sweetness and certainty? Or "Smile," a plush Euro-ballad overlooked when it first appeared on the group's second CD? Or, deepest of all, the song that overpowered "Smile": "Sight for Sore Eyes," the most gospel-pure outcry dance music's heard since Aretha mattered. If it isn't sexual ecstasy when Small goes "I feel your body like a velvet glove" while the music purrs, pumps, and pfffts, it can only be the same thing called by another name. So let's just call it life.

Which is a good argument for enjoying a second pass through the M People oeuvre without feeling trifled with: why not live twice? Testify helps move the past forward, too, including three remixes of early M People hits: "Colour My Life," "How Can I Love You More," and, biggest of all, "Moving On Up," a statement-of-purpose song that made M People (briefly) a success in the US. The hit is remixed by Mark Picchiotti, a Chicago house master (and sometime Junior Vasquez protégé) who knows how to blend two powers, female ecstasy and big deep-house beat, in a tight love embrace that squeezes Small's vocals for joy (and boy, does the naughtiness in her going "Take it like a man, baby, if that's what you are" resonate here) even as his beats crunch closely forward, hard and dark and full of punch.

Still, true M People fans want to see Small ride the radio again, ride it to another "Move On Up" glory. And revisits cannot do the trick. Small and her music men need to rev up their happiness hearts again, to sing about dangerous joys and impossible heights of passion, to dance on broken-glass beats, to bathe it all in perfume that is Europop -- in short, to write a song that has the scent of "Smile," the beat and lift of "Move On Up," and the revelation of "Sight for Sore Eyes." Because pop music needs a shot of muscle love, a kick of up-the-sky beats with none of the whine-lipping and puckmouth that pimples so much hip-hop. Can they do it? Sure they can. The real question is, "Will they?"