Soul Searching

Maxwell has soul and plenty of it. Of course, many artists claim to have soul - a quick glance at MTV's never-ending parade of slick, swinging R&B brothers and sisters will tell you that. But with Maxwell, it's quite different. It could be the songs (beautiful, minimal scats which address the big S issues such as sensuality, sexuality and spirituality with little fear of failing) or it could be the image (drop-dead gorgeous features, that big afro and a shy, winning smile) but more than that, it's the voice.

A skyscraping falsetto which can take comparison with such greats as Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Al Green in its stride, before moving onwards and upwards, Maxwell's voice has won a lot of rave notices for his two albums to date. While his 1996 debut, Urban Hang Suite, introduced the concept of a new way of dealing with soul to a world which had begun to tire of the chancers who had hijacked the term, this year's Embrya is an album with a different set of concerns. Taking the power and passion of the debut to another emotional level, it is imbued with a sense of spirituality which is often caricatured in the all-knowing 1990s.

But there's no doubt that Maxwell means it when he brings his beliefs into the game. Born in New York in 1973, religion played a major part in his early life. You could put that down to a strict Puerto Rican mother (who raised him alone after the death of his West Indian father when the boy was three) but there are few Brooklyn kids who would have attended Baptist church five times a week and spent nearly all of their free time studying the Bible in their bedroom.

So when Maxwell starts to talk about spirituality, he is sincere. "For me, what I do is about the inkling of being more than just about this time and space," he states quietly. "My personal philosophy is my own and it works for me; I don't think that what I believe is what everyone else should believe."

This, he says, applies especially to music. "People really want to have more than just the pleasure of listening. Music is very powerful; it gives us an insight into the magnitude of what having beliefs in something unseen can mean to you. Music is not something you can actually hold or touch or taste, it's something felt. Sure, it is heard, but the actual feelings you get from listening to it are things that you cannot touch or see."

As a lone preacher of such a gospel, Maxwell might risk ridicule and isolation. However, Urban Hang Suite drew many other believers to his side and even acted as the dynamo for a movement of similar souls. The arrival of Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, Rasheen Paterson and Adrianna Evans on the scene prompted the raising of a "nu-soul" banner. Maxwell isn't insulted by such categorisation or even by such company. "I can see the need for such things; it's about getting a grasp on something, making it easily digestible for those who want information, for those who need to reference the information. The sad thing, though, is that when those scenes die out, sometimes the artists die out too."

As it is, his own tastes and influences are so broad that there's little chance of him becoming so confined. He names composers Mahler and Gorecki, Massive Attack collaborator, Craig Armstrong ("his album The Space Between Us, man, that's so cool") and Cocteau Twin, Liz Frazer. "The things I like the most are so wide and so far apart that what I want to be is a hybrid, a combination of things that are within the shell of soul or what soul represents. I want to bring acts like Kate Bush and Nine Inch Nails to people's attention. I think if I do that, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."

He's also keen to widen what soul can cover. "When you look at someone like Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye, they represented so many musical genres and so many ways of thinking; to a degree that's what made them what they were, and what they still are today. If you look at what someone like Bjork does, she incorporates so much music - and all kinds of music - into what she does that it turns out brand new. It's like someone setting something out in a particular frame of reference to go from A to B. What I want to do is go outside that, to make it A, C, V, F, D, B. You get there, but the journey is far more fun."

Like many soul acts Maxwell acknowledges the importance of future generations. After all, he reasons, where would he be without what's gone down on record before him? "There's a definite tradition in soul music which we work to today. I sure hope that what we're doing will still be of relevance in 30 or 40 years' time. It's very important for me to leave something behind in terms of a legacy. I think that what we do in this life is reaching for some kind of immortality, even though it's still there after we make the move.

"Everything I try to do, I want it to be more than just the moment, because that's what I respect most in the music that I listen to and in the artists that I like. What they have are lives and experiences that can be appreciated in many lifetimes to come. That's what I try to offer, but you only really know if you succeed long after you're dead. That's the trouble with immortality, man - you're not around to enjoy it!" Maxwell laughs. Somewhere in the midst of that quiet intensity lurks a sense of humour.

Ask him about the first record he bought and he'll even tell a tale against himself. "Oh man, you don't wanna know this, it's so cheesy. It's a freestyle record, very Puerto Rican, which was huge in Brooklyn by Jyaya called If You Leave Me Now [laughs]. At the time, I was going out with this girl who was just about to break up with me, so it made a lot of sense to me. I was 15 and it was tough; I was afraid of her, but afraid of breaking up with her. I suppose I had commitment issues. Yeah, commitment issues at 15. "Believe me, I wish I had bought something else. It was a mindless record." Unlike Embrya, which is an album with a deep and emotional tug, a soul album which really deserves that tag and one which will cast a spell on the listener.

Embrya is out now on Columbia Records.