Leon Bridges

Good Thing Sony

IT was hard to avoid the Sam Cooke comparisons with Leon Bridges’ engaging debut, 2015’s

Coming Home. Even the handsome young singer’s wardrobe was stylishly vintage. For this follow-up, however, the Texan has decided to go far less retro.

Good Thing is state-of-the-art contemporary R&B, with a heavier reliance on synthesizers and programming. For the most part, Bridges manages to keep it from sounding antiseptic — he still has that sweet, Sam-like croon, and this time also employs a falsetto. He also seems more intent on playing the sensitive love man, and numbers such as Shy and Mrs. have an erotic charge that was missing from the debut.

Not that it all works. Lions ,for one, falls flat with a halting rhythm and a half-baked metaphor, and the love ballads veer too close to the generic.

Good Thing does contain welcome echoes of the more organic musical approach of Coming Home. They include Beyond and the set-closing Georgia To Texas ,a spare but evocative coming-of-age ballad. And there’s also the swinging, horn-accented Bad Bad News, on which Bridges seems to be delivering a message to those who might not like the turn he’s taking, and also telegraphing his ambition: “Why you trynna hold me back / I’m just trynna move up front / Lil more of this, lil less of that / ... I’m tired of being in the back.”