Timberlake’s ‘Love’ leaves audience exhausted, satisfied

He went from cool to hot in less time than it just took to read about him doing so.

Justin Timberlake started the song in command of his passions, his voice a dog on a leash.

“Let me put it on cruise control,” he purred over twinkling keys as bright as the stars in the eyes of all the ladies in the house.

His nonchalance was momentary.

Soon, Timberlake was howling as if hot coals had been dumped down his trousers.

The dog had chewed itself free of its restraint.

“O-o-o-o-o-h, girl,” he emoted, hanging onto his words as if he was in the throes of the ecstasy they implied.

The band followed the frontman’s lead.

What began as the kind of understated piano vamp that you might hear in a hotel lounge quickly got all sweaty and slicked in R&B lather, culminating with a blustery guitar lead ripped from the back of the heels.

The number in question was “My Love,” a song about seduction performed in a manner that mirrored its subject matter, done with a slow hand, a deliberate pace building and building into an explosive climax.

Timberlake and his powerhouse 11-piece band, plus four backup singers, didn’t just perform songs about love’s physical side, they approximated its rhythms during their 27-song, 2½-hour show at the MGM Grand Garden on Friday, which was divided into two sets.

Dubbing themselves JT and Tennessee Kids, they were at their best when starting in one place and finishing somewhere else entirely.

“Drink You Away” began as a bluesy, plaintive juke joint lament, with Timberlake playing an acoustic guitar at the foot of the stage, his bandmates clustered around him. By song’s end, though, Timberlake was testifying like a street preacher beneath brimstone skies over equally fervent organ playing.

Likewise, moody kiss off “Cry Me A River” opened as a skeleton with bones of synth and whiplash percussion suggestive of a snapping bullwhip. Minutes later, the band had added layers of muscle and flesh in the form of hard rock guitar and assertive bass lines with Timberlake singing a few bars of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” along the way.

The tone was set early: a show-opening “Pusher Love Girl” sprawled into a 15-minute funk jam that the band plowed into like a linebacker trying to shed blockers.

Similarly concussive were the Latin rhythms of “Let the Groove Get In,” which Timberlake sang while prowling a massive riser that ran the length of the arena and moved to the back of the hall during the latter half of the show.

Here, Timberlake stepped down to a smaller stage where he once again strapped on an acoustic guitar, this time to offer a break from all the bombast, first performing a sufficiently sad-eyed cover of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” followed by the blithe, breezy pop of “Not a Bad Thing,” a gorgeous take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” where Timberlake’s lithe voice fit the soft contours of the song perfectly, and a stark, pained “What Goes Around … Comes Around,” which Timberlake sang as if salt was being poured onto his lacerated heart.

Before long, though, he was traveling back to the main stage, propelled by the punchy horns of “Take Back the Night,” which segued into a soul wind sprint where the band roared through Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie,” Timberlake’s own “Murder” and Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” without pause.

Soon, it would be time for Timberlake to bring “SexyBack.”

Shortly thereafter, this one-night stand would be complete.

After that, there was little left for the audience to do but collapse in an exhausted heap, maybe smoke a cigarette.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.