//Neon Reviews: Robin Thicke – Something Else//

When Robin Thicke set out to follow-up his platinum-selling breakthrough album, The Evolution of Robin Thicke, he did it feeling a little tired of what he was hearing on the radio. To him, everything sounded the same; people were talking about the same old thing. Wanting to break the cycle, he vowed that his new album would be something new; it would allow listeners a chance to hear something else. So, that’s what he called his third full length musical set: Something Else.

Written and produced entirely by Thicke and his partner in musical composition Pro J, Something Else really isn’t something new. Instead it’s a retrospective album of music from the 60’s and 70’s with Thicke’s spin on the era with wild horn arrangements, soulful female background singers, and Thicke sweet falsetto. But that’s not to say it isn’t a welcome changed from today’s sex-in-the-club, next-big-ringtone, hot-for-the-moment-producer crazed R&B.

Thicke expertly borrows influences from some of soul music’s greatest throughout the album. He channels Marvin Gaye on the album’s starter “You’re My Baby“; he adds a dig huff in his voice reminicent of the late great James Brown for “Sidestep“; “Hard On My Love” could easily be the little brother of Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusher Man“; the simple production, heartfelt lyric driven ballads “The Sweetest Love” and “Cry No More” could pass for something Stevie Wonder would write; “Something Else” and “Shadow of Doubt” sees Thicke paying homage to the soulful-disco sounds of Earth, Wind, and Fire.

An enchanting guitar rift opens the most modern song on the album, the reflective post-Hurricane Katrina Lil Wayne featured “Tie My Hands.” The song is a hold-over from The Evolution so it’s clear why it doesn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the material on Something Else.

Robin Thicke may not be offering anything groundbreaking with his third album but if you’re tired of hip hop tainted R&B and want to get back to pure soul, pull up a chair, dim the lights, get a glass of wine and switch your CD player to something refreshingly different, something else.

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