Review Summary: The last glimpse of what could have been.
Maroon 5's
entire back catalog seems to be getting all the attention on Sput these days when their newest album
Jordi is not even two months old. I guess that should tell even a netizen who might be browsing this site for the first time how universally irrelevant and worthy of condemnation Maroon 5's latest atrocity is. Even songs like "Beautiful Mistakes" I originally was far more lenient towards have dulled on me big-time. It's just another reminder that Maroon 5 used to
mean something. Even their most tacit offerings from their early days had enough zest and personality to justify their existence. There is simply
no reason for new Maroon 5 music to exist in the present day. I was going to say there's no reason for the band themselves to exist, but then you remember, they've been missing for a long time and 2010's
Hands All Over is the last confirmed contact anyone has with that iteration of the band.
It certainly lacks some of the bite
Songs About Jane and
It Won't Be Soon Before Long had, but
Hands All Over does feature some of the band's all time best work. "Misery" is one of their finest moments on record and I will not tolerate any slander on its precious name. Those funky guitar licks and that swelling neosoul chorus are just a treat as Adam Levine plays the role of his lover's prey to perfection. "Give a Little More" follows a similar mold. Levine reaches for his falsetto with effortless grace and Robert Lange's production is just top notch. The track rides out James Valentine's riffs for a few verses before Matt Flynn ramps up the drumming on the bridge a little bit. It's the attention to detail and subtle idiosyncrasies that make Maroon 5's earlier work enduring works of art.
By the time we reach "Stutter" the band is really hitting their stride. It conjures up reminders of "Little Of Your Time", but with even more live instrumentals. "Don't Know Nothing" glides in on a vivacious synth and key combo and Adam serves up another bouncy stanza about lost love. Once again, everything just clicks. The vocal layering and those extra synth washes on the choruses make for another standout track. "Never Gonna Leave This Bed" is a power pop masterpiece. The band may have leaned heavily into the adult contemporary pigeonhole on this one, but it's still tremendously executed. The verses glisten and sparkle and the band's smarter pop rock tendencies shine on the chorus. "I Can't Lie" coasts on a similar sound palette, but you can't indict the band for milking it for all it's worth. Those bouncy keys on the bridge are mesmerizing and Adam dazzles vocally.
The title track at least
tries to change up the formula. The intro is just plain bad, but the
Jane-esque instrumental attempts to salvage things. Levine's performance is perfectly passable and has enough zeal, but the songwriting takes a sharp decline on this one. "How" gets things back on track though. I wouldn't call it the sound of complacency, it just offers no surprises. It might feature the best bridge Maroon 5 has ever concocted, but the song's chassis does falter just a tad into more formulaic territory. If you're fearing a last minute collapse, the inoffensively average "Get Back In My Life" may lend itself to those fears. Once again, I can't argue with the finished product, but at this point the band has to labor to be interesting and this one simply isn't as immediately engaging as the barrage of bangers that proceeded it. Adam even manages to pencil in some downright silly yelling in the track's waning seconds.
"Just a Feeling" reeks of late 2000s bubblegum pop. By now we're readily able to identify the album's biggest problem. Everything sounds
great, but the more we trek on, the more everything starts to bleed into each other. Maroon 5 prove they have the versatile enough skillset to tailor themselves to pretty much any approach they want to take, but standout moments become fewer and farther between after a while. "Runaway" sees Adam Levine's vocals smothered by distorted backing vocals and "Out of Goodbyes" is smothered by the presence of country trio Lady Antebellum. This collaboration came about ten years too soon. It's the kind of offensively middling and contrived offering you'd expect from two supremely irrelevant bands like this, but then you're reminded these guys ruled the God damn world in the early 2010s and it's hard to quantify how much, if any of a good thing that was. Maroon 5 started the decade with this, the dying spasm of their musical aptitude, while Lady Antebellum took the sunny pop brand of country popularized by Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts while discarding
all of its personality.
Once you weather the messy storm of "Out of Goodbyes", the
grand finale awaits. "Moves Like Jagger" is bar none, the most tectonic moment in Maroon 5's history. It revitalized their career when it seemed they were fading into obscurity, prolonging that inevitable senescence by several years, their first track to top the Hot 100, and their last modicum of potential before they sold out and became unrecognizable shells of their former selves. What a way to go out, though. It's got all the hallmarks of a vintage Maroon 5 track. Slick, funky riffs, bouncy (if artificial) drum fills and arguably the best vocal performance of Adam Levine's career. He and Christina Aguilera sell this one quite handily, their smooth vocals perfectly complimenting the ultra-danceable grooves that close out a solid third album and also set the stage for Maroon 5's epic collapse in later years.
The album itself isn't all its cracked up to be either. It starts out incredibly strong, with the very intimate and engaging feeling of watching a talented live band put all they have to offer out there. In its later moments, however, it sags under its own weight. If you went into
Hands All Over thinking you might escape without seeing the band cave to their worst pop tendencies, I can imagine your disappointment. I echo those sentiments myself. And then of course "Moves Like Jagger" is appropriately slotted as the bombastic curtain call; had it appeared earlier, it would have thrown the album's ebb and flow completely off. All of that said, though,
Hands All Over is a very enjoyable album, criminally underrated when discussing just
when exactly Maroon 5 lost their mojo. Most would tell you their first two records were the only taste of what they could have been. Others might tell you
Songs About Jane is the only scantling of quality from the group, and some may tell you the band never had it at all. Perhaps I'm much more lenient than most, but Maroon 5's prime lasted a lot longer than people give them credit for. Of course, we're all in agreement that they went to complete excrement from here. It was nice while it lasted, though.
