L-O-V-E

Everything about this recording announces pleasure before a single word is sung — the piano intro has the cheerful inevitability of a theme song, each letter of the title introduced with a small orchestral flourish that is self-aware enough to be fun rather than precious. Cole is in full performance mode here: not the intimate confessional register of his ballad work, but the polished, generous mode of an entertainer who understands that delight is a real thing to deliver. The voice still has its characteristic warmth, but the rhythm is brisk, the band is tight, and the effect is of something constructed to make a room feel better about itself. The song operates alphabetically through a definition of love, accumulating small images that build into a cumulative emotional argument — a structural joke that the arrangement plays along with. It's music for the middle of a gathering, for the moment when people have relaxed enough to actually enjoy themselves. You don't turn to this song for consolation or depth; you turn to it when you want to remember that some things in life are simply good, and that noticing they're good is its own kind of sophistication.