A lot of people seem to keep Robin Thicke at arm's length and not quite embrace him as a serious R&B artist, possibly because he's white and the son of (and dead ringer for) a cheesy pop culture institution like sitcom star Alan Thicke, maybe even moreso than people regarded inevitable point of comparison Justin Timberlake, who's both white and himself a cheesy pop culture institution via 'N Sync and the Mickey Mouse Club. And though Thicke's clearly talented and sincere in his love of soul music, I kept him at arm's length, too, more because of the reliance on a less than perfect falsetto in his singing and a flair for shamelessly corny loverman lyrics. But I gotta give it up for the guy, his third album, Something Else, is fucking solid. The falsetto and the cringe-inducing lyrics are still there, but they only occasionally grate because the tunes and sonics, all written and co-produced by Thicke himself, are beautifully realized.

Songs like the stark and stately waltz "Dreamworld" and the more rock-inflected tracks "Hard On My Love" and "Shadow Of Doubt" pull together the album and make it a little more interesting and varied than a straight R&B record, but they fit alongside the more straightforward material comfortably enough that they don't feel like self-consciously diverse novelties. The uptempo disco soul of the single "Magic" gets a few kindred spirits in "Sidestep" and the title track, and there are of course of the slow, soft babymakers, none of which will be quiet storm evergreens like "Lost Without U," but still do their job. And Lil Wayne's "Tie My Hands," which remains one of my favorite songs on Tha Carter III, works unexpectedly great here as a somber closer, not even sticking out the way a rap collaboration usually would at the end of an album like this. In a year when a lot of talented R&B auteurs like Ne-Yo and Raphael Saadiq are making good albums while overstating how creative or unique the direction they're going in is, Robin Thicke has tried to stay well within the bounds of a genre that still hasn't fully accepted him, and came perhaps even closer to making a thoroughly great modern soul album.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27, 2008 at 6:48 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.