Man of the Woods

It’s a grab bag of styles and sonic mood boards. ... Once an artist who reshaped the contours of the Hot 100, Timberlake now seems content to ride out his own scenic route, as blithe and unknowable as he’s ever been.

Parts of Man of the Woods are his most exploratory music in years, whether it's the skippy, juddering avant-funk or making meaningful modern countrypolitan without sounding like a disco ball in a Solo cup. It's not perfect, but you can't raise a barn without getting your hands dirty.

Man of the Woods, a funky, country-laced experiment that’s not nearly as bad as its already damned reputation suggests. Though the lyrics might be.

Unfortunately, Man Of The Woods’ thematic depth hasn’t quite caught up to the rest of his ambition. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it does make for a record that’s not quite as transcendent as it was built up to be.

Although he’s not really mixing musical genres as originally promised, he’s mixing up some music and lyrics that shouldn’t really go together, which makes this one crazy peanut butter cup of an album.

Ultimately the album is three or four songs too long, but Man Of The Woods is rarely less than entertaining. Too slick to be a genuine man of ‘rough’, Timberlake nevertheless continues to lead the way in his field, even if he does so without consistently reaching the greatness he so clearly strives for.

With his fifth studio album, Timberlake isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but he solidly continues to experiment with R&B, funk, pop and soul, with Americana creating an interesting layer.

Man of the Woods pitches unevenly between town and country, with folky campfire songs about the joys of nature arranged around electronic rhythms and electro funk. The two strains don’t really get along. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-inducing. But when it’s good, it’s world-beating.

The good bits are great, the bad bits best avoided, but in a pop world where originality isn’t much encouraged, there’s something really laudable about the intention behind it, and its author’s willingness to think outside the box.

There’s definitely a nod to new Nashville here--however, we’re talking more Mumford & Sons if they started songwriting for Justin Bieber than the grit and guts of Waylon Jennings or the current king of classic country, Sturgill Simpson.

The highlights aren’t as colorful as we’ve come to expect from Timbaland or the Neptunes, or as tuneful as we’ve come to expect from Justin Timberlake.

At its worst, it wants memory over future. At its best, it wants to remember who sings next, after the shades fade.

Conceptually muddled, qualitatively uneven fifth full-length.

Expertly appointed but emotionally inert homage to the place that he says made him.

Too often, Timberlake sounds adrift.

Immaculately produced and performed, it's hard to imagine Man of the Woods not being a hit, its tracks a steady stream for playlist fodder. But sound and feel are no substitute for soul.

The majority of the highlights on Man of the Woods, from the faux-Stevie Wonder groove of “Higher, Higher” to the smooth dance-floor glide of “Breeze Off the Pond,” could have appeared on any Timberlake album, give or take a few pointedly rural references to roadside billboards and canoes. The songs that hew more closely to the Americana vibe, meanwhile, are mostly embarrassing.

As a pop-R&B hitmaker, he could let his genius producers do the heavy lifting while getting by on showbiz-schooled charm, but the styles he dabbles in here aren’t as forgiving of average songwriting. When Timberlake does commit to his theme, the results are mixed.

Sometimes convincing, sometimes limp.

Man of the Woods is not an outright disaster but it is a significant disappointment--a record too preoccupied with image, volte face and forced “REAL” to fully engage as a coherent piece of craftsmanship.

JT’s smug family life is the single thread uniting this 16-track jumble of songs that swing between batshit and bland, and romance comes in two forms: soppy odes, or sloppy humblebrags about shagging.

For all its best intentions, Man of the Woods often feels rushed, occasionally underproduced and at times, unfinished. Lacking the effortless polish of previous releases, it troughs more than peaks and ends up floundering in its own ambition.

The album doesn’t sound phoned in, necessarily, but it absolutely sounds vacuous, vapid and clichéd.

An uneasy fusion ensues, however, in which Timberlake “gets his flannel on” (Flannel) and mostly fails to combine the rural with an edgy digital aesthetic--a particularly gnomic duet with country star Chris Stapleton (Say Something) is produced by Timbaland. Sometimes, though, new ground is broken.

To summarise, Man of the Woods is an astoundingly poor, inconsistent, and sloppily constructed outing from an artist whose defining feature has been his ability to cleanly reinvent his image.

Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

“Haters gonna say it's fake,” Timberlake frankly asserts on, 'Filthy'. They needn't even bother. Genuine or not, it simply doesn't work.