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For those who like their pop delicate and unapologetically deep, this is one for turning up loud and wallowing.
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Mar 16, 201190It's one of the best things you'll hear all year. Bring on the next two.
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For all its dimensions and progress, the album is simultaneously designed to ensure that devoted fans will feel the wait was worth it.
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90The first album in a series of three (all with the same title, differing only in capitalizations) BLACKsummers'night isn't just the soul album of the year, but also a top-tier addition to the canon of a once-fizzling scene.
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90Maxwell might be delivering one course at a time, but for now, delivering one of the best albums of 2009 will sate your appetite just fine.
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Mar 15, 201188It's free of gimmicks (Hey, an R&B record without Auto-Tuned vocals!) or trendy producers (No Kanye, no Timbaland; instead, guitarist Hod David does most of the work). No wonder BLACKsummers'night walks its own confident path down the artier fringe of R&B.
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80It represents the singer's best work since the aforesaid "Urban Hang Suite." [Sep 2009, p.93]
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80The first single's called 'Pretty Wings,' but the whole thing flies.
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80The album teeters on adult contemporary but never lets go of Maxwell's characteristic playful glint. Anyone remotely interested in his sound should pick this up.
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80BLACKsummer'snight is a testament that Maxwell hasn't lost a beat.
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BLACKsummers'night is however, an impressive return to form. This is undeniably enthralling music: masterful, captivating and marvelous.
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78While it lacks the iconic significance of his debut, BLACKsummers'night is a record more than worthy of Maxwell's talents, because it trades the physical sensuality of his earlier work for a deep emotional resonance, the performance of an artist whose focus and attention to detail gives his expression a singular veracity.
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His sentiments rarely transcend the boudoir--and listeners lulled by the album's unvaryingly sleek, high-gloss beats may just drift off to dreamland before they get there.
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Upon first blush, there isn't much to chew on in BLACKsummers'night. Upon second pass, the absences become haunting.
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70A few tracks (the fuzzy 'Fistful of Tears') miss the mark, but this is the necessary R&B return from one of our great--and seemingly lost--soulmen.
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Maxwell's voice is so unusually rich and supple that at best, as on the mercurial 'Bad Habits,' you cannot help but disregard his fondness for cliche.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 20 out of 21
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Mixed: 0 out of 21
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Negative: 1 out of 21
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10
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albertaa10
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TarekM.10Brilliant, wonderful and delightly entertaining.