Between the first track, "Cept You & Me Babe," with its declaration of similarities that end up being differences in intensity, and the final song, the hidden track "Marriage Chant," Brown paints complex portraits that level the silly misconceptions often fostered by pop music (and television and movies). "Real Good Friend" describes a relationship that's in a perpetual rut, and thus dead. "Waiting on You"’s title is its subject -- and Brown’s weary response is "one of these days I'm gonna go away from this / without a why, without a cry, without a kiss." "Lullaby" is a paean to passion and closeness: "Oh babe I ain't that sleepy."

Brown probes and creates portraits that will ring true to anyone in love and probably truer, perhaps even painfully so, to someone whose love has gone. Is there advice here? Only to keep putting yourself and your heart out there, ready to bend and break -- which is to say that there are no new answers. Would we really believe otherwise? Brown knows us better than we know ourselves.