Sometimes you just can’t help but feel a little grateful. This new companion EP to Songs in the Key of Life was released on the album’s fiftieth birthday (happy birthday, as Stevie Wonder himself would say). I’m never go nuts over bonus editions of albums or what have you, so I wouldn’t have known if the songs that appear on this EP had been heard at all prior to its release, but apparently this is the first time they’ve been unleashed from the vault since the sessions wrapped up over five decades ago. These songs are all pretty freaking good.

Some of them seem to have placeholder rhythm tracks that are cheap, Casio-sounding beats, but once you’re over that, there’s a lot to enjoy. Everything devours those percussions on It’s Easier; its grooves, its chords that pound into one another, its vocal harmonies that develop as the song does, that embrace. Stevie’s royal harmonies transform the somewhat ordinary chord progressions (by mid-‘70s Stevie Wonder standards) of I Can See the Sun In Late December into something that sounds completely original. Similar developments of harmony and melody are greeted by smooth-yet-vicious reeds, planetary keys and squelching synths on I’m Into Livin.

The easiest one-liner you could say about something like this is ‘even his outtakes are gorgeous’. These songs – in the key of life – are sophisticated but funky, grooving and partying; basically the album itself, condensed but with separate material. Had these songs been on Songs in the Key of Life, the album would’ve been just as good, if not, somehow, better. Stevie Wonder is such a genius, he’s found a way to improve one of the best albums ever made, fifty years later.

Best tracks – It’s Easier – I’m Into Livin – I Can See the Sun In Late December.

Rating – 9 out of 10