Nick Jonas is either the second or third solo album from
Nick Jonas -- it all depends on whether the pre-
Jonas Brothers 2004 set Nicholas Jonas or
Who I Am, his 2010 album with the short-lived Administration, count -- but there's no denying that this 2014 eponymous effort is designed as a statement of purpose, a way to break away from his now defunct gang of siblings. Throughout this gleaming collection of stylish pop-soul,
Jonas takes pains to seem modern -- he finds space for
Angel Haze on the lead single "Numb"; he keeps returning to cool, glassy electronic rhythms, sometimes informed by hip-hop; somewhere he swears enough to earn this album a Parental Advisory sticker, although it's a hard profanity to spot -- but his strengths are in his classicism, both as a songwriter and a blue-eyed soul vocalist.
Jonas' voice is slightly thin but he knows how to deploy it with sweetness and seduction (although swagger always seems to elude his grasp), a quality that keeps things lively even when things threaten to slide toward the sleepy (as they sometimes do when the tempos slow, which is why
Demi Lovato's presence is welcome on "Avalanche"). For all the guests and modern accouterments,
Nick Jonas is at its best when
Jonas plays it straight, when he relies on his eternal
Prince and
Stevie Wonder fixations, which give him not only a fairly rich palette to draw from but provide him with a good direction to channel his melodic skills. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine