On his sixth solo album,
All Night Days
,
Rob Thomas
offers what serves as a semi-motivational balm for troubling times. After opening the record with a lyrically reassuring merger of pop and rock in "Hand in My Hand," he placates with uplifting songs like the gospel-inflected "I Believe It" and "Hard to Be Happy," a counterintuitively jaunty entry that affirms that lows are temporary.
Thomas
continues to reassure while acknowledging struggle on tracks such as "Losing My Mind," on which he cops to hiding the strain at times, the triplet-metered slow dance "No Good at Loving You," and the encouraging closing track, "Back to the Start." After two decades with
Atlantic
marked his debut for
Universal
. ~ Marcy Donelson