Mrs Gaye, your decree nisi* has arrived.

Forcibly confined together in the family’s bosom over the Christmas and New Year holidays, tempers fuelled by strong drink, rich food, sloth and boredom, is it any wonder that rates for separation and divorce soar at this festive time of year? What better record, then, to end the holidays than Gaye’s classic kiss-off to Anna Gordy, the boss’s sister whom he married in 1964 and almost immediately regretted it. The marriage tottered along until the mid-’70s when they divorced and destitute Marvin was ordered to render the proceeds of his next album unto the former Mrs Gaye. Coming on the back of What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On, a commercial whopper was anticipated but Here, My Dear, a double, stiffed. History has been a better judge. In fact, Gaye portrays the marriage and its subsequent disintegration in one of soul’s outstanding personal statements, acid and angry, sweet and loving, sentimental and sour. Among the many highlights: I Met A Little Girl, Anger, Sparrow, Anna’s Song, and a barbed You Can Leave, But It’s Going To Cost You. An icepick presented on a velvet cushion, it’s as succinct as a Raymond Carver short story.

*A decree nisi (from the Latin nisi, meaning "unless") is a court order that does not have any force until such time that a particular condition is met, such as a subsequent petition to the court or the passage of a specified period of time.