Originally issued as part of a 1994 box set and newly expanded here with nine additional performances, {|Love Starved Heart|} assembles 25 unreleased tracks recorded by {|Marvin Gaye|} between 1963 and 1971, {|Motown|}'s golden era. That it took three decades for these songs to see the light of day speaks far more to the intensity of the label's assembly line production ethic than to the quality of the material itself -- at their most pedestrian, these are fine performances simply lost in the shuffle, but at moments like {|"It's a Desperate Situation,"|} {|"When I Feel the Need,"|} and {|"This Love Starved Heart of Mine (It's Killing Me),"|} {|Gaye|} achieves the same peaks of his hits of the era, crafting performances of such sublime beauty and haunting poignance that their failure to reach the masses until now is nothing short of remarkable. Still, where classics like {|"I Heard It Through the Grapevine"|} and {|"Ain't That Peculiar"|} tend to suffer from years of oldies radio wear and tear, {|Love Starved Heart|} sounds positively refreshing -- in their own way, these long-lost songs reaffirm the timelessness of {|Marvin Gaye|}'s brilliance even more than the familiar hits on which his reputation rests. ~ Jason Ankeny
