Mystique is an elusive commodity. Though Maxwell has recorded several of the most visionary soul records of the last quarter century, he never captured the greater public’s imagination the way ’90s neo-soul contemporaries like D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill did, in part because he’s never been interested in playing the tortured artist. Even though he retreated from the public eye for much of the ’00s and has made fans wait seven or eight years between his recent albums, his relationship with fame isn’t complicated. On his active social media feeds, he comes across as a happy, well-adjusted guy who really enjoys the beach, and on stage he never disguises how much he enjoys being there.
If all that means that Maxwell will never rival D’Angelo’s cachet, then so be it. It’s a fair tradeoff for his fans, who have the luxury of seeing one of their generation’s greatest living soul men when he swings through their city every year or two. For his return to the Riverside Theater Tuesday night as part of his “50 Intimate Nights” tour, the 45-year-old singer proved he can still move like a teenager. And his dance moves only grew more limber as the night went on, as his blazer came off and his setlist worked its way backward from his recent urban adult contemporary hits—his comeback singles “Pretty Wings” and “Bad Habits,” and an island-inspired reworking of 2016’s gorgeous “Lake by the Ocean”—and toward the harder-thumping jams of his breakthrough 1996 debut Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite. By the end of the night even fans in the balcony were dancing in the aisles.
Maxwell’s artier ambitions were on display throughout the night, too. Along with his six-piece band, he performed on a pristine white stage with a set design that looked like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and midway through the show a video package celebrated the 20th anniversary of his most difficult album, 1998’s Embrya. It was a reminder of how ahead of the curve he’s been throughout his career—Maxwell was making odd, aquatic, alternative- R&B nearly 15 years before that kind of project became a shortcut to prestige. But mostly it was a reminder of how little he cares about critical approval. Embrya confounded critics at the time, but now it’s seen as one of his best works. The album that followed are similarly ripe for rediscovery, too, but Maxwell didn’t seem remotely concerned about that Tuesday night. He had a party to attend to.
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