ALBUM REVIEW

STEVIE WONDER

“Music From the Movie

‘Jungle Fever’ ”

Motown * * * Maybe Stevie Wonder just needs a boss. Leave him to his own devices and he’ll while away years working on an album, but hire him for a movie project and he’ll casually whip up a soundtrack in no time. This time, director Spike Lee acted as employer, and the result--an 11-song collection tossed off in a mere month while Wonder took a break from another long-in-the-works album--is, if well short of a Wonder classic, quite irresistible and his most satisfying work in a decade.

Though the drum tech is obviously contemporary, the shuffling grooves recall Wonder’s ‘70s hits more than his often treacly ‘80s work, down to the way the omnipresent synthesizers sound like primitive Moogs at their most glorious.

Unlike his earlier venture into film song cycling (the “Woman in Red” debacle), most of Wonder’s tunes for “Jungle Fever” have roots in the script. The mechanically funky “Chemical Love” addresses a drug-related subplot; the sweetly threatening “If She Breaks Your Heart” (sung by guest vocalist Kimberly Brewer) comes from the p.o.v. of a cheated-upon wife; “Each Other’s Throat” and the Rundgren-esque ballad “These Three Words” deal with family dysfunction.

Catchiest of all is the inter-racially themed title song--could this be the in-your-face “Society’s Child” update hit of the ‘90s?

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic).