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Steve Winwood
Moneyland
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I'm Not There (Original Soundtrack)
Various Artists
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Neil Diamond
Toby Keith's 35 BIGGEST Hits
Toby Keith
It's A Shame About Ray (Collector's Edition)
The Lemonheads
About a Son
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Otis Redding
Loaded
Wood Brothers
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Maroon 5
Normally (although not deliberately), the American Hit Network tends to ignore bands like Maroon 5. A bluntly commercial band with this much corporate support does not need our backing, so we 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 we do anyway, so voicing our opinion about the musical value of these acts would feel like screaming at the wall. Usually, we 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.
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