Maxwell albums are like comets: They don't appear often, but when they do, they have a way of reminding you how small you are in the vast scheme of the universe. A song like Maxwell's version of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" feels like evidence of the existence of hyper-evolved human beings in the world. His voice on that song is a technical marvel, all these falsetto swoops and restrained pyrotechnic howls. But he delivers all of it with so much feeling that it never comes across as being showy; it's like he's using his absurd range to communicate emotions that the rest of us can barely process. And when you think of how he's using all those gifts to interpret a Kate Bush song, a song about the intense and joyous agony of childbirth, it becomes a work of unbelievable empathy -- even more so when you realize that Maxwell doesn't even have kids, that he's working in a realm of pure abstraction. Listening to a song like that, I feel something like how the mere humans in X-Men comics must feel when they learn that there are other people out there who were born with amazing powers, that we are not among their number. It's wonder, and it's also fear.