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A silent return

Musical musings
Last Updated 09 July 2016, 18:50 IST

R&B artiste Maxwell, gone for seven years, is returning to an almost unrecognisable musical landscape with his new album ‘blackSUMMERS’ night.’ Joe Coscarelli writes about the elusive artiste

The first time Maxwell disappeared, he was gone about eight years. After starting his career in the mid-1990s with three platinum albums in a row, each delivered punctually, this soul and R&B singer all but vanished. He opted not to tour and didn’t release the expected follow-up to Now, from 2001. Instead, he faded into near anonymity.

But his fans waited: BLACKsummers’night debuted at No. 1 in 2009 with his best sales week ever, and won two Grammys. Maxwell assured his faithful listeners that such a gap wouldn’t happen again, explaining that his fourth album was part of trilogy he’d already written and, in large part, recorded, with the next installments to follow in consecutive years.

Then another seven years went by.

“I couldn’t believe how big it got — it freaked me out,” Maxwell, 43, said of his first comeback. The long break that again followed, he said, was the result of an intensive creative process, which is dependent on “living a life” — romantic relationships remain Maxwell’s muse — and escaping expectations. “I like to forget who I am as much as I possibly can,” he said. “The problem is that I’m constantly being reminded that I’m supposed to be this way, this thing that everyone knows as a product.

“Can you imagine the anxiety?”

blackSUMMERS’ night is his lovelorn trilogy’s long-delayed Part 2, more upbeat and groove-oriented than its predecessor. Citing disco, gospel and rock undercurrents, and the influence of Tame Impala’s psychedelic pop, Maxwell called the music “progressive soul”.

A long hiatus

While he has always resisted trend-hopping, having initially emerged from the so-called neo-soul movement, which rejected the flash of the ‘90s for earthier ‘70s throwbacks, Maxwell is returning yet again to an altered musical landscape, this one almost unrecognisable: R&B has been subsumed even further into hip-hop, with rappers doing a lot of the singing themselves, while music sales have cratered in favour of online streaming, which rewards the brand-name artiste and instant gratification.

If Maxwell’s last return was a triumph of quality in a changing but still-receptive market, this one is more of a toss-up, though the ingredients remain the same. His dense new album — free of the songwriters, producers and guest rappers of the moment — will count once again on a patient audience seeking a more intricate, lyrically mature alternative to modern R&B, a genre often less reliant on vocal strength and range than attitude and delivery.

“We’re trying to be rappers now,” Maxwell said. “I’m a big Chris Brown fan — I know all his records. But when it comes to what I write, I know that in 15 years, if I’m still alive and able to do it, I don’t want to look like an idiot singing the stuff that I wrote when I was 22. I’m lucky that most of what I’ve done holds up for a 55-year-old.”

He added, “You want it to sound like you don’t really know when it came out.”

Aside from concern about his public profile, there is Maxwell’s artistic diligence, an intense allergy to repeating himself and others. He eschews the studio trickery of Auto-Tune and will wait — sometimes years — until the right mood strikes him to lay down vocals. When the feeling hits, it works: He recorded the new songs ‘Listen Hear’ and ‘Lost’ in one take each.

Starting out, “I didn’t expect to have ideals about ‘this is how things have to sound,’” Maxwell said. “Most people are business people. They’re like, ‘OK cool, I’ll go work with Fetty Wap and Rihanna,’ and they buy their little penthouses, and they’re feeling sexy like that.

“I don’t do it like that.”

Instead, Maxwell has kept the same small team of collaborators and business associates since he first hit it big alongside neo-soul artistes including Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo.

D’Angelo, another songcraft and studio obsessive, also retreated inward after finding early success. When he returned in 2014 with Black Messiah, his first album in nearly 15 years, it was with a sharper political and racial edge.

Songs of the heart

Maxwell, though, has stuck to songs of love and heartbreak. He says he keeps up with current events and even watches C-SPAN for fun. “But I’m not a guy who’s caught up in colour and race and creed and gender and sexuality,” he said. “I’m not a fight-the-power guy.

“If Trump doesn’t get elected, I’ll probably make a ballad album of love songs. But if he gets elected, I’m going to have to be a political guy all of a sudden.”

The closest Maxwell comes to politics on blackSUMMERS’ night is on the funky ‘III,’ when he sings, “I just want a Michelle Obama lady/To hold me down when the world’s crazy.”

The reference — a rare topical mention in Maxwell’s lyrics — came from the same place as most of his writing: an intense longing, and lingering anxiety, about finding that forever love. Such unions have long been on his mind: His debut album, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, climaxes with ‘Suitelady (The Proposal Jam),’ in which he implores a partner, “I only wanna understand you baby/So will you marry me?” He was 20 when he wrote the lyrics.
Unmarried, Maxwell said he struggles to “know how to receive love,” which is complicated by the adoration he receives from female fans.

“I feel really good when I’m by the water, reading a pretty good book and when I’m really sure of the love that I have in my life,” he said, adding, “But then at the same time, the music is so overwhelming that nothing beats it. It wakes you up in the morning and says: ‘Write this.’”

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(Published 09 July 2016, 16:02 IST)

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