Review Summary: See the floor from a cleaner point of view.
Starting at the beginning is all well and good, but sometimes traveling back to
before the beginning can yield some interesting fruit. My deep-dive into Maroon 5's music - "music", for lack of a better word these days - originated from my deep, deep distaste for the non-album
Jordi (initial contender for the worst album of the year until Drake decided to throw his hat in the ring with
CLB) and a fond remembrance of the days when their music could be classified as, well, music. During this runthrough of their surprisingly brief discography, it occurred to me that I'd never given Kara's Flowers a proper chance because, well, how many people actually did? How many people actually know about the fact that Kara's Flowers was Maroon 5 before they were Maroon 5? The prospect of listening to Maroon 5 material that I'd never
actually had any exposure of any kind towards was an interesting one - I'd grown up with them always playing on the radio, after all - so I went into
Fourth World with a refreshingly open mind and absolutely no bias whatsoever.
And
Fourth World wound up being an absolutely fascinating album. It is, simultaneously, an interesting sneak peek of the early sounds that would go on to shape and define Maroon 5's funkier music on
Songs About Jane, and a time machine that throws you back into the 1990's. I was legitimately surprised by the first two tracks - "Soap Disco" radiates a strange Blink-182 kind of energy, with its anthemic, pop-punk chorus, the straightforward, power chord-dominated verses, and melodic, major-key guitar fills... and "Future Kid" has a downright grunge-y energy, sounding like a melancholic collaboration between Third Eye Blind and the Foo Fighters. Both of these songs are really enjoyable in spite of how un-Maroon 5 they actually are - "Soap Disco" has a gorgeous, tropical bridge that caught me off-guard, and the brooding nature of "Future Kid" is a pleasant, naturalistic surprise. Neither of these tracks feel disingenuous in the slightest.
The rest of the record settles into a comfortable power pop & alt-rock vibe after the initial surprise of these first two tracks, and there's some decent gold to be found here, especially in the midsection of
Fourth World. The Oscarbait string sections and interplay of acoustic and electric guitars work surprisingly well on the summery, poignant "Never Saga", "Loving The Small Time" is a slice of nostalgic pop-punk guaranteed to put a big ol' grin on your face, and even though "To Her, With Love" is a pretty clear emulation of Extreme's "More Than Words", I wound up liking it a hell of a lot more than "More Than Words", thanks in part to a stronger sense of melody and the surprisingly intricate, gorgeous instrumentation, instrumentation that flirts with chromaticism and out-of-key chords so frequently that it lends an aura of sophistication to the otherwise-simple ballad.
Not every experiment is a success -
Fourth World's greatest sin is that of clumsiness, the kind of clumsy arrangement and songwriting that just comes with being as young and inexperienced as the boys of Kara's Flowers were at the time. "Myself" relies upon a lumbering vocal melody throughout, and it shifts through its different sections with a similarly uncertain, awkward gait. The Radiohead-esque, organ-tinted intro of "Sleepy Windbreaker" has very little to do with the rest of the otherwise-decent song and its punk rock theatrics, and "Pantry Queen" feels uncoordinated, throwing in random arpeggios and off-kilter drum patterns haphazardly, without much consideration about how these different elements work in unison. In general, the moments where
Fourth World tries to break the mold and experiment are pretty hit-or-miss. A justifiable flaw - as a young composer, the songs I wrote during the genesis of my songwriting career were pretty inelegant as well. But this is a flaw that defines the second half of the frontloaded
Fourth World regardless. Justifiable flaws are still flaws, after all.
Fourth World is fascinating for the same reasons albums like Eminem's
Infinite and Prince's
For You are fascinating -
Fourth World is a compelling case study of four promising-but-untested musicians that've got some obvious talent but haven't refined it yet.
Fourth World is fun - it's lively and full of energy, it's structurally sound, and even though the album starts to lose some momentum towards the end of its runtime, those first seven tracks (save for "Myself") are a blast to listen to, containing shards of potential and promise that would go on to define Maroon 5's stellar debut five years later.
