Justin Timberlake goes back to his Nashville roots with mixed results – Man of the Woods, review
For his fifth studio album, Justin Timberlake has ditched the slick suits and replaced them with shaved head, scruffy beard, beanie hat and a range of baggy checked shirts.
He really loves those shirts. So much so that he has written a song about them, called Flannel. “Right behind my left pocket/ That is where you’ll find my soul,” he croons as acoustic guitars essay a simple country chord sequence. Later, booming electronic percussion and layers of digitally treated harmonies lend an other-worldly, hymnal aura to proceedings as he wails, “Oh, it’s my flannel.”
This mismatch of lyrics and music gives an unfortunate comic air to some of the cheesier tracks on Man of the Woods, from which the whole project struggles to recover. Timberlake is a native of Tennessee, and has spoken of his desire to pay homage to his Nashville roots: “It’s southern American music but I want to make it sound modern.” But Man of the Woods pitches unevenly between town and country, with folky campfire songs about the joys of nature arranged around electronic rhythms and electro funk. The two strains don’t really get along. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-inducing.
But when it’s good, it’s world-beating. Timberlake is still leader of the pop pack when it comes to lean, techno grooves. Ever since he broke out of ’N Sync, the Nineties US boy band, in 2002, he has carved an idiosyncratic path, working with adventurous producers such as The Neptunes and Timbaland.
Harmonies are his strong suit, and here he stacks up voices to create a plush depth that counters the icily electronic sound palette. Dance songs such as Filthy and Midnight Summer Jam are sparkling and joyous, thrillingly updating the Seventies disco of Earth Wind & Fire and the Bee Gees – as long as you pay no attention to the content, a weird mix of rural homilies and saucy innuendo. He does like a double entendre (“I’ll be the wood when you need the heat”), which doesn’t sit well with the rugged sentimentality of his new mountain man persona.
From Otis Redding to Bon Iver, plenty of artists have shown that the gap between Americana and R&B is far from unbridgeable. But at its core, roots music tends to focus on the simple virtues of storytelling and emotional veracity, framed in verse and chorus format. The trouble here is that there is often very little actual song underneath Timberlake’s audacious arrangements. Repetition and snappy sound bites give his dance tracks energy, but they fall apart under the scrutiny that country music demands.
Throughout Man of the Woods, Timberlake’s high, breathy vocals stab out a message of “escape to the country” with all the conviction of a Michael Jackson impersonator jamming with the Drive-By Truckers in an Alabama roadhouse bar. It is a nice idea, but you know it is not going to end well.
Justin Timberlake: Man of the Woods is out on today
