Sananda Maitreya - Prometheus & Pandora album review

You’ll recognise the returning voice, if not the new name

Cover art for Sananda Maitreya - Prometheus & Pandora album

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The Artist Formerly Known As Terence Trent D’Arby continues to display the qualities that 30 years ago propelled his debut album to 12 million sales, alongside the wilful indulgences that limited its follow-up to just two million.

The three-CD Prometheus & Pandora was written, played and produced by Maitrey/ D’Arby, who brings his own take on two ancient Greek titans in his own inimitable style(s). It is by turns provocative, idiosyncratic, soulful, illuminating, obscure, humorous and frustrating. His sublime ‘son of Stevie Wonder’ voice carries all but the most ludicrous of his linguistic gymnastics.

But it is long and complex to follow. It could have been condensed into a single CD for clarity and focus, but that was never going to happen.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.