“Everwanting: To Want You To Want” like many of the song titles is slighty ostentatious but the song itself opens with a big bassy groove that sets a much darker atmosphere than on anything he did on his first album. Ultimately though every music album comes down to the same question – are the songs any good? Many have tried to do something like this over the last few years (Miguel for one) but have never been able to capture the essence and profundity of “Embrya”. The subsequent albums were more of the style you would have expected him to produce but with “Embrya” he was was able to do something that gives us a taste of what alternative R&B can give. Maxwell would probabaly admit that this album was for himself. That sounds a tad pretentious and in a way the whole project is.
It still has tracks that follow the mold of the debut album but the whole presentation of the set from it’s song titles which was words all put together and the front cover which is Maxwell in an underwater scenario sees it all given to the listener in way which says that you are not just listening to a piece of music, you are to become part of it. The use of words like “You” and “Me” are highlighted to make his point. There is an insistence on making simple words bolder and with more meaning.
The lyrical content is deeper as he delves into a world in which love and sex and relationships have all become one and he is seeing everything in a liner way. With “Embrya” he rips up the rule book and releases an album which was indulgent, experimental and ultimately unique. Maxwell had produced a debut album that was smooth, easy to listen to, modern with a ode to the past and was littered with radio freindly hook filled songs.
The debut has made Maxwell into a star and he had received success in the charts and also critical acclaim for “Urban Hang Suite” in which he was riding on the wave of the Neo Soul movement as he brought Soul/Funk/R&B and Jazz into a contemporary style which was accessible to the masses but still retained it’s gravitas. Maxwell certainly suffered from this problem with his second album “Embrya”. It says something when critics continue to predictable criticise an artists sophomore album with the accusations of being too much a departure from the debut often thrown in the faces of musicians who have attempted to change the direction of their musical careers.
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