It's also one of three tracks written or produced with Stuart Matthewman (Sade and Maxwell's debut). The energy picks up slightly on 'Gravity: Pushing to Pull,' which describes an irresistible, and clearly unresisted, attraction, with just a hint of obsession. The rhythms are cool, languid, smoothly enveloping, near-whispered endearments and exhausted surrenders. The best of these - 'Everwanting: To Want You to Want' and 'Submerge: Til We Become the Sun' - posit Maxwell as the godfather of romance making offers that can't be refused. In between are nine songs and one slyly funky instrumental ('Arroz con Pollo') that examine the various ways in which love and sex intertwine. The album begins with a music-less, unsung 'Gestation: Mythos' (a flighty discourse included in the lyric book) and ends with the title track, a spare, spooky instrumental vamp of no particular substance. Other times, you'll wish Maxwell had spent more time refining his songs than he apparently did crafting maddeningly obtuse lyrics and such mouthful-titles as 'Eachhoureachsecondeachminuteeachday: Of My Life.' At its best, it's sensual, late-night mood music. Instead, 'Embrya's' glistening production is almost wholly reliant on supple, insinuating grooves that feel more like cast spells than songs. And, as Washington audiences have learned, he's one of the most charismatic, confident performers since the heydays of Marvin Gaye and Teddy Pendergrass.īut the sharp bursts of energy that enlivened 'Urban Hang Suite,' the subsequent 'MTV Unplugged' album and Maxwell's SRO concerts are missing here. With his dreamy tenor and flaxen falsetto, Maxwell is clearly pop's reigning lover man, the most effective revivalist of silken '70s soul since the curiously absent D'Angelo. That's not the only problem with 'Embrya' (Columbia). Maxwell made up the mysterious title word, which he describes as 'an approaching growing transition thought to be contained but destined for broader perception.' Which might be unkindly translated as 'hanging a ill-fitting suite on a collection of love songs that don't really need the conceptual constraints.' Maxwell's new album, 'Embrya,' expands on the restless romantic inquisitions of his 1996 debut, 'Urban Hang Suite.' Like that collection, 'Embrya' is something of a concept album, though the concept is decidedly fuzzier this time around.

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