After years of inactivity, Steve Wonder suddenly has a lot on: an album in the making, a performance piece about his life as a blind man and, not least, his first European tour in a decade. Led on stage by his daughter, Ayesha Morris - who once gurgled in the bath as her father addressed her babydom in Isn't She Lovely - the 58-year-old arrives to the kind of reception afforded resurrected deities. Wonder's 1960s Motown singles and 1970s run of electronic-based, socially campaigning albums place him at soul's highest table. His back catalogue is so immense that even a supposedly "lesser" moment - the Bob Marley tribute Master Blaster - causes pandemonium in row 40.
Moments later you can hear a pin drop as he explains why he is returning to the road - the death of his mother two years ago. "I wanted to take all the pain that I was feeling and turn it into joy," he says. However, an introspective Visions suggests the anguish that inspired his finest work has not left him. A dedication to Louis Braille, another blind man who "refused to give up", is similarly touching, before the promised joy arrives with an upbeat Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing.
The singer looked frail when he was led on but exploded into life once he had located his harmonica. Though he is playful (saying "Hello Birmingham" through a vocoder), there are uncomfortable reminders that this man hasn't produced a stone-cold classic since flares were fashionable. His golden voice occasionally falters and his quality control seems as random as pinning a tail on a donkey. There are interminable jazz-funk workouts and a baffling section where the footballer George Boateng arrives clutching a statue, which it turns out is honouring the world's first black pro footballer, from 1885, and not the ex-Villa midfielder.
However, just as Wonder has always told us that if we keep on trying we will reach the Higher Ground, he delivers. A flawless run of classics stretches from 1960s stompers Uptight and Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours to sublime love songs My Cherie Amour and the funky I Was Made to Love Her, before a quadruple KO of Superstition, I Wish, Sir Duke and an extended Always. There's no Boogie On Reggae Woman, no Lately and no encore, but a simultaneously stellar and wobbly performance shows that soul's most gifted superstar is, more than ever, the most human.
