Reading reviews from people who go to great lengths to say how "over it" they are when a band (god forbid) changes their musical direction a bit and produces a follow-up to a hugely successful album that dares to be different than its predecessor crack me up.
If the only Maroon 5 set you ever want to hear is SAJ, then don't ever buy any others, just keep listening to that. I loved Songs About Jane, I loved their live acoustic CD's, and I love their new CD. So what if a lot of their lyrics are about love gone wrong - we live in a country where more relationships fail than flourish, so most of us can relate to the lyrics. That they are able to capture the emotions associated with it (anger, bitterness, revenge, sadness, acceptance) in such a wide variety of musical styles speaks to the strength of their creativity, and that they channel some greats in the process (yes, Won't Go Home does have an Every Breath You Take-like guitar riff) is awesome.
I won't go song-by-song, but there are so many great tracks on this CD - catchy, lyrically clever, tightly produced - that the fact that there are a couple filler tracks is largely unimportant. You can't find hardly anyone who doesn't hum along to Makes Me Wonder, and I'd venture to say that several more tracks from this CD - If I Never See Your Face Again, Little of Your Time, Won't Go Home Without You, Can't Stop, Kiwi, Back at Your Door - are also major hit single potential.
There's no point in whining that your favorite best-kept-secret band hit the bigtime and is writing for a larger audience - all of their material they've done has been great in different ways, and this CD is going to be huge. Can't wait to see 'em live again. It Won't Be Soon Before Long. (Explicit)
Normally (although not deliberately), I tend to ignore bands like Maroon 5. A bluntly commercial band with this much corporate support does not need my backing, so I usually leave it alone and let the marketplace decide for itself. The world at large seems to understand Avril Lavigne, Nickelback and Fall Out Boy a lot better than I do anyway, so voicing my opinion about the musical value of these acts would feel like screaming at the wall. Usually, I simply look the other way, but I've been listening to "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" for a few weeks now, and it has me believing that Maroon 5 can justify the hype.
Maroon 5's last album, "Songs About Jane," may have been released in 2002, but I didn't hear a note of it until two years later, when the relentless push from the band's backers finally ignited the jet fuel that lifted the band to stardom. Apparently, I wasn't alone in this regard, since the band took home a Grammy award for best new artist three years later, in 2005. Naturally, that brought them a lot of attention, but I figured they would suffer the same fate as many previous `Best New Artist' winners and vanish into the night sky. "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" renders my prediction obsolete. The production is damn near perfect, but in a mid-`80s, Quincy Jones kind of way that often gets in the way of allowing the band to establish its own identity. There is a slick, funky sheen to the best songs, and vocalist Adam Levine dishes out melodies that are flawlessly polished to a full luster. Imagine Maxwell covering a Michael Jackson hit with an ace rock band for support, and you'll get close to the essence of this song collection.
The subject matter is also intriguing. There are lots of cheating songs on the disk, and lots of lyrics that will break the hearts of hormone-addled romantics. If his words are remotely autobiographical, then Levine could be the poster boy for the lovelorn, even when his sentiments are shopworn and clichéd; on "Won't Go Home Without You," he knows the girl was right to ditch him, but swears that he needs "one more chance to make it right." On "Nothing Lasts Forever," he sings "I love you but I'm letting go" while "Can't Stop (Thinking About You)" is self-explanatory. "Wake Up Call" is a bit more blatant - "Caught you in the morning with another one in my bed. Don't you care about me anymore?" Umm, I don't think so, dude, but don't worry about it, because there are millions of fans to help to ease your pain. This'll sell zillions, and I can understand why it will. B+ Tom Ryan
This album doesn't come close to "Songs about Jane." The new disc is washed, scrubbed and polished to the point where you just want to hear some raw emotion out of Levine's voce but you never do. But instead what you do get is smartly written, smarmy pop gems that is still better than most of anything else on the radio these days.
All over the disc you get snippets of other artists that have influenced them and that mostly comes from the 80's. You get a Prince tune: "Kiwi," with its metaphorical lyrics, "Goodnight Goodnight," which sounds as if it fell out of Stevie Wonder's amazing songbook and the stunning "Better that we Break." Maroon 5's a great band, but here it seems as if they are going after a new audience while trying to sustain their old but without branching out as artists. They can handle more than what they are doing on this disc. Levine at times, treads the same waters as he did in "Songs about Jane."
Maroon 5 return with the follow up to their hugely successful debut "Songs about Jane", and are off to a good start so far, with lead off single "Makes me wonder" (in a similar mould to "This love") already #1 on Billboard.
It was always going to be tough to top "Songs.." and they don't. However, they continue in the same rock/pop/funk direction as their debut, though this time around the songs don't jump at you immediately.
Other standouts (besides the incredibly catchy "Makes me wonder") are "If I never see your face again" (great guitar intro), the upbeat "Little of your time", the equally energetic "Can't stop", the more midtempo "Not falling apart" (with a nice chugging bassline), the Michael Jackson-like "Wake up call", and the ballads; the "She will be loved" clone "Won't go home without you", "Goodnight goodnight", and the retro sounding "Back at your door".
But even these don't come close to the standouts from "Songs.." and that's the problem, a lack of catchy songs and nothing new. There's nothing here that we haven't heard better from their debut. A very good case of playing it safe. The album will no doubt sell in the millions.
P.S. Look out for the bonus tracks some of which are better than some album tracks;
"Infatuation" (lovely ballad)
"Until you're over me" (catchy upbeat number sung in falsetto, both available on the Australian edition)
"Figure it out" (a mellow to raging funk/rocker with nice kettle effects)
"Losing my mind" (nice rock ballad)
"Miss you love you". - Music'
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