BlackSUMMERS'night

Background

blackSUMMERS'night was Maxwell's first record in seven years, following 2009's BLACKsummers'night, which was the first in a planned trilogy of albums whose names were distinguished by the capitalization of letters in one phrase of the same title. Maxwell told The Wall Street Journal in June 2016 that the trilogy is "loosely based on the concept of a night out for a woman named Black Summers". He produced most of blackSUMMERS'night with longtime collaborator Hod David. The song "Lake by the Ocean" was released on April 8 as the album's lead single.

Release and reception

blackSUMMERS'night was released by Columbia Records on July 1, 2016. In its first week, the album charted at number three on the Billboard 200 and sold 59,000 album-equivalent units, 57,000 of which were entire copies of the record. It became the fourth album of Maxwell's career to reach the top 10 of the chart.

blackSUMMERS'night received widespread acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 86, based on 15 reviews. In the Los Angeles Times, Lorraine Ali found the music charming and evocative while describing Maxwell as a "transcendent", multi-dimensional singer. Jim Farber from Entertainment Weekly said the record "exudes enough confidence to let his heart show and to let his music grow in any direction his muse demands" while offering "fresh textures to familiar soul sounds". In the opinion of Rolling Stone's Joe Levy, "the music evokes a tradition disappearing before our eyes – the spiritualized eroticism of Prince, the jazzy soul extensions of Earth, Wind and Fire – without ever being of it." In The Guardian, Dave Simpson called it "a classy comeback collection of anguished R&B". Paul Mardles was less enthusiastic in The Observer, suggesting the record lacked memorable songs and innovative sounds; apart from funky songs such as "Lake by the Ocean", blackSUMMERS'night makes Maxwell, "in the era of Frank Ocean, look like the yesterday’s man of R&B", Madles wrote. Jim Carroll of The Irish Times also found the music relatively "old-fashioned" and wrote, "there are far too many moments here when he appears to be relying on that rich, chocolate voice to woo you rather than try something different or risky."

Personnel

Credits are adapted from AllMusic.