Working Hard To Step Out Of Gloria Loring’s Shadow

Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Something Else, the new album by soul smoothie Robin Thicke:

• “If Thicke doesn’t offer the freshness or effortless fluidity of his influences, he’s at least a savvy and resourceful student—and a great date, no doubt.” [USA Today]

• “It’s not so much that Something‘s old-fashioned (both the sound and his videos clearly benefit from the best in current technology) as it is happily inclusive of the past. There may be very little here that is truly innovative, but Thicke proves that new dogs do old tricks pretty well.” [Entertainment Weekly]

• “Unlike his hit 2006 album, The Evolution of Robin Thicke, an interminable slog of boring R&B ballads and vanilla hip-hop, the singer-songwriter has learned about tempo, variety and vocalizing and can do something other than offer a grating falsetto for every track. As a result, Something Else becomes something else, indeed.” [Miami Herald]

• “As a utilitarian background soundtrack, it’ll do nicely—lots of babies will be made to ballads like ‘Cry No More.’ But Thicke’s songwriting teeters into self-parody, and his mixed metaphors–‘We’re just spaceships in the night/Ripping the clothes off of the past/Making a new path’—could break the mood of the randiest couples.” [Rolling Stone]