flamepillar's Full Review: It Won't Be Soon Before Long by Maroon 5
Would it be so presumptuous of me to just come right out and say off the bat that this album is every bit as great as Songs About Jane, if not better? Well, either way, I'm sayin' it. So there.
A brief history for Maroon 5's new fans. Originally, the five were actually four, and the band were known as Kara's Flowers. They pretty much put out a generic sort of pop sound that never seemed to go anywhere. This would have been around 1997. Well, six years later, this is where most of you come in, they added a fifth member and put out Songs About Jane, which was a few steps up on the funk scale and an all around fun album whose singles hit the ceiling one right on top of the other. Most of those singles remain staple pop hits on your everyday radio station and hell, even some Muzak stations play 'em!
The problem is, what are you supposed to do once you've established an original sound and you have everyone's attention, what do you do then? You can take the ambitious route, go completely Pink Floyd psychotic and end up like Alanis Morissette (although to be fair, Junkie's sales are nothing to laugh at), or you can cash in by going in a more mainstream direction, but to point out specific examples of that would be akin to pointing at air molecules.
There's not a whole lot else you can do, aside from just doing the same exact thing again on your second album.
I'm kind of wrestling with trying to pick which of these routes Maroon 5 have taken on It Won't Be Soon Before Long. In some ways, I find that it is very much a combination of all three. There are some tracks here that sound like they could still be about Jane (or possibly her dead boyfriend), there are some that are so shamelessly ardent that I still get all goosebumpy even today while listening to them ("It's Not Over Tonight") and there are a trio of songs that are faster than anything on Songs About Jane period. There's just a lot going on here.
The opener, "If I Never See Your Face Again" takes only a single listen to grab you, yet subsequent listens still unravel layer upon layer of that pure old school funky 80's sound. It's not real heavy on the melodic aspect, but it doesn't need to be. The fact that you have to pay such close attention to absorb everything makes it all the more of a shock when they toss in a change-up or a twinkling arpeggio of notes. You just never know what's coming.
"Makes Me Wonder" is much the same way. The chorus is just flat-out classic. I love it when a song sounds so blatantly "familiar" and yet I can't for the life of me pinpoint where I've heard it, although my mind keeps wanting to say Prince. Anyway, you've heard this one.
"Little of Your Time" is where it all starts getting crazy. M5 never rocked like this on Songs About Jane, I know that much! This is a noisier track that does take a few listens or possibly a little tweaking of the graphic equalizer to figure out where they're going. There's some clever hookage going on here, and until you've familiarized yourself with the song, it's all a matter of hanging on for dear life and enjoying those precious and few seconds when you think you finally have figured out what it's doing. I actually get more of a 60's vibe off of this song, but maybe that's just me.
As for "Wake-Up Call", I guess you could say it's something of a delight in this day and age of constant censorship, to see a song about killing someone get to be a single and actually get played on the radio. 'Cause wow, I mean, I didn't think it was gonna happen. This tune is a little bit on the monotonous side, but it rocks the living snot out of that monotony!
"Won't Go Home Without You" replaces "Wake-Up Call" as second single to our Muzak station, but I'm not complaining one bit. And I won't be surprised to see this song become third single on the radio, seeing as how it's kind of a counterpart to Jane's "She Will Be Loved". I actually think this song is far more catchy, without all the annoying falsetto, even though it is arguably twice as corny and mainstream as all frickfrack.
Speaking of counterparts, we also have a "Sunday Morning" counterpart in the form of "Nothing Lasts Forever". In many a similar way, this song is that summery, breezy kind of tune that may be a little more of a "private" kind of song, where "Sunday Morning" was the flashy type. At least by comparison.
And back we go into rockville with "Can't Stop". I'm not sure about this one, they may have been trying just a little too hard to sound all rocking with the absurdly placed bar chords. Still, it's an energetic track and the ending feels just like Maroon 5 even when the rest of the song doesn't. Which is exceedingly rare.
As we draw close to the end of the album, this is where the ballads start to kick in, starting with "Goodnight Goodnight". This one's actually quite good, just the kind of anthemic power-ballad people will want to wave their lighters to at the concerts. Following it up is a song called "Not Falling Apart" which initially was my pick for the #1 filler track. Until it got stuck in my head for days on end and I had no idea why. Even worse still, the longer it stayed in my head, the more I liked it. I don't know what it is about that song, but it is far more awesome than it has any right to be. This is another track where Maroon 5 play at a "poppier" speed (around 120 bpm) which they rarely did on Songs About Jane.
Then there's "Kiwi". Good Lord. It's just on the verge of sounding experimental, but damn if it isn't the catchiest little thing you've ever heard! It's kind of like some old Michael Jackson song, makes me wanna shake my ^ss, that's all I know. Right in the middle of it, this background music joins in, and for a magical 40 seconds or so, this song cruises through the most beautiful mosaic of musical mastery imaginable, then it just rocks like no tomorrow to finish itself out.
And it really had to, I guess, to compensate for the fact that the album ends with two ballads, "Better That We Break" and "Back At Your Door". Of the two, I like the latter one best; it carries with it a kind of waltzy "coffeehouse" feel, something that would've been right next door to Maroon 5's sound if music were a neighborhood, but you never expected them to go pay it a visit. Well, they just did.
And that's pretty much It Won't Be Soon Before Long in a nutshell. I have thoroughly enjoyed this album twice as much as I ever expected to. Much as I might have lauded Songs About Jane, my memory tells me that much of that album sounded samey-samey after a while (I haven't heard it in years), the singles notwithstanding. And I feel no inclination to say the same for this album. Which has me this close to tossing out the old five stars, but not quite. Where are those half star ratings when ya need them?
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