Maxwell is back, still sexy but maturity shows

ATLANTIC CITY - Maxwell is "the grand set-upper," as the 36-year-old soul man put it Friday night during his sold-out concert at the Event Center at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.

"You don't have to buy diamonds or flowers," the cool, calm, collected customer told the decidedly outnumbered guys before delicately offering Al Green's "Simply Beautiful" to the ladies.

The sweetly seductive bedroom singer was just looking for a little well-deserved credit for serving up a date-night stimulus in a time of economic hardship: "If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be getting that piece of booty you're getting right now."

Backed by a skilled 10-piece band featuring guitarist Melvin "Wah-Wah Watson" Ragin before a crowd more "grown and sexy" (in the words of opener Chrisette Michele) than the youngsters who gathered for a fiery set by the Roots downstairs at the Music Box theater later in the evening, Maxwell took to the stage in a double-breasted suit.

The suavely debonair love man has left his Afro behind and embraced mature, old-school R&B in his new album, BLACKsummers'night. He employed his slightly grainy falsetto with aplomb all night long.

He started off with "Get to Know Ya," from 2001's Now, and then asked a paramour to "prove it to me in the nude" in "Bad Habits." He reached back to his 1996 debut, Urban Hang Suite, for "Sumthin' Sumthin'," ". . . Til the Cops Come Knockin'," and an extended encore of "Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)."

Maxwell's been absent from the pop scene for nearly a decade. BLACKsummers'night, which topped the charts upon its release this month, is his first album in eight years. But the crooner has been welcomed back by a fan base hungry for a taste of organic baby-making music.

Onstage, Maxwell has a winning way of acting sheepish about being sexy. "I'm trying to be a nice boy, but you want me to be bad," he teased. And although his sensitivity may be in the service of an ultimate goal - "to lay you down on the couch, and make love until you say ouch" - unconventional expressions of empathy, such as his cover of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work," never come off as merely calculated.

At several junctures in the 90-minute show, however, the smooth seducer nearly lost his savoir faire. "I've never been so shook up before," he said, fidgeting. The cause of consternation? There was royalty in the house: "It's very difficult to be cool when Miss Aretha Franklin is on stage."

Actually, the Queen of Soul was not on stage but rather watching from fifth-row center, but Maxwell, charmingly, seemed unable to think clearly while being watched by the woman he referred to as "a national treasure." Alas, she did not get up and sing, but Maxwell put an extra measure of yearning and pleading into the fluttery hit "Pretty Wings," which he dedicated to her.

Michele opened with a short set of jazzy neo-soul that was politely received by the portion of the crowd that didn't choose to get in the mood for Maxwell at the lobby bar. For better or worse, the most distinctive part of her performance were her imitations of other singers, including Erykah Badu, Anita Baker, and John Legend, during her closer, "If I Had My Way."