Something Else (CD - 2008)

Personnel: Robin Thicke (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, glockenspiel, shaker, sleigh bell, background vocals); Bobby Keys (guitar, acoustic guitar, banjo, sitar); Pro J (guitar, drums, congas, bongos, tambourine, percussion); Andrew McKay (guitar); Alfredo Rivera (flute); Jerahm Orozco, Dan Higgins, Kamasi Washington (saxophone); Chuck Findley, Gary Grant, Josef Leimberg, Brian Warfield (trumpet); Isaac Smith, Charlie Morillas (trombone); Larry Cox II (Fender Rhodes piano, organ, Wurlitzer organ, synthesizer); Sean Hurley, Greg Malone (bass guitar).

Audio Mixers: Richard Travali; Fabian Marasciullo.

It would almost seem like an insult to call Robin Thicke's SOMETHING ELSE "neo soul." That term is often applied to slavish retro rehashes, and Thicke's fourth album is anything but that. SOMETHING ELSE assimilates the influences of everything from Marvin Gaye to Prince to Philly soul to disco, and puts them in a sonic blender that delivers a distinctive, original-sounding end product. While this album isn't a wild stylistic divergence from what Thicke has done previously, it's a more singular, atmospheric experience, an album of mellow blue-eyed soul that you can really sink your teeth into, from the Jeff Buckley-meets-Otis Redding "Dreamworld" to the romantic, horn-punctuated falsetto-fest "The Sweetest Love." Think of Thicke as something like a hipper, alternate-universe version of Justin Timberlake.

Looking like a Europop album from 1997 or 1998, Something Else's sleeve design would be much more indicative if it grafted a bunch of little Robin Thicke heads onto each dancing and playing body in Ernie Barnes' Back to Sugar Shack, the painting used for Marvin Gaye's I Want You. Not only would it be apt, it would play to Thicke's predilection for populating his covers with several images of himself. But it would obviously cause some problems. While a few songs do modernize the sound and feel of Gaye's steamy 1976 classic -- filled as they are with serene sexual energy and lush, impeccably layered arrangements built on rolling bongos, liquid basslines, and Thicke's acutely Gaye-indebted upper register -- there are several inspirations floating throughout, including indications that Thicke has a deeper understanding of Brazilian music, correctly believes that Philadelphia International did not flame out in the mid-'70s, and has transitioned into doing rocking R&B à la Van Hunt (cool, relaxed, natural) rather than pre-New Radicals Gregg Alexander (forced, awkward, unintentionally seriocomic). Following The Evolution of Robin Thicke, which went to the top of the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and reached number five on the Billboard 200 (there was an Oprah appearance), Something Else features improvements in every aspect. From the tropical serenade opener to the album's quietly dazzling true close (the somber Lil Wayne collaboration "Tie My Hands" is really a bonus cut, having already appeared on Tha Carter III), Thicke has shed his affectations to the point where it's much easier to detect the sincerity he once obscured with hubristic tendencies. No longer a show-off, he sounds much more sure of himself; he would not have been able to pull off a socially conscious Southern-styled ballad like "Dreamworld," whether from a writing or singing standpoint, in 2003. Though his sources remain numerous, this is his most focused, least scattered, and least dilettantish set, and it benefits greatly from its brevity relative to The Evolution. That means everything has a deeper resonance -- especially the ballads, of which there are several. The man does know his audience. ~ Andy Kellman minimize