Review Summary: Triumphant return to form? The album certainly thinks of itself that way.
There have to be few bands in the world more frustrating than Maroon 5. They exploded onto the pop scene in the early aughts with a funky blend of hip-hop and LA rock that helped keep guitar music with band performances on top 40 radio for a few years more than might have otherwise enjoyed, while also providing something that really didn't exist in the pop marketplace at the time. Then when their second decade together kicked off, something
happened. We know the story, so I won't rehash it again. For the better part of the last 15 years, Maroon 5 has been serving up musical lobotomies in increasingly grim fashion. This decline has been compounded by public statements made by the band's frontman Adam Levine. Levine, whose head is so far up his own ass that he should have choked on his bullsh*t by now, has described rock music as 'nowhere,' that hip-hop is where all the innovation is occurring, and that -this one's my favorite- 'there aren't any bands anymore.' He, of course, then clarified that there's essentially no bands currently achieving the kind of
pop success that his band has enjoyed. But I think his waxing poetic about this shift in the zeitgeist is humorous considering people like him have arguably done the most damage to elicit that reality.
Levine also made that latter statement in the run-up to the release of his band's last album
Jordi, which I'm pretty sure is employed at Guantánamo Bay as an information-gathering device. I'd like to forget
Jordi as much as you do, so let's press along. In 2023, Maroon 5 dropped the standalone single "Middle Ground," which marked the first serious return of guitars into the band's formula since they first began to really put them away in the 2010s. A folksy soft-rock song, "Middle Ground" was spectacularly...
decent. A good song, but nothing revolutionary. After two more years of little activity, the band began rolling out tracks from their eighth and latest outing,
Love Is Like, which brings us to today.
Love Is Like is not the first time that Maroon 5 has teased a return to the kinds of stylings found on their iconic debut album
Songs About Jane, but it is the first album that actually tries to keep that promise. The problem is, I think it comes a few years too late. The band has eroded so much good will among the general public, and Levine's voice has deteriorated into a tuneless shell of what it used to be. Where previously he could charm the pants off of even those who could smell his toxicity from a mile away, Levine now just brays vacantly into the void, accompanied by lyrics that read as focus-tested and that barely scratch any kind of surface in terms of emotional depth.
Love Is Like continues this habit from previous albums, often alluding to themes of love or romance that Levine can't be chuffed to act like he actually means.
Another problem for the album is that it sounds less like an album from Maroon 5's early catalog, and more like an album from a different band entirely. Whereas
Songs About Jane was influenced by 90s rock and R&B,
Love Is Like seems influenced by
Songs About Jane, as if a new, unknown act heard that album and made a languid effort to ape all of its best qualities. There
are some nice moments here, like "My Love", which features slick riffs from James Valentine and a cool melody. "Yes I Did" boasts of a shimmery main hook, the return of Levine's trademark falsetto, and a rad guitar solo (?!) from Valentine on its bridge. "Yes I Did" might easily run away with being the best song on the album, and one of the few modern Maroon 5 songs worthy of being added to the canon of their most essential work.
Suffice to say, though,
Love Is Like functions best when it ostensibly leans into any shred of rock influence. Elsewhere, the band is still frustratingly hobbled by their more misguided tendencies. "Jealousy Problems" has a fun chorus and plays a lot like the tracks we've already discussed, but the verses are some of the biggest offenders on this whole project. Levine tries his hand at
rapping, even slurring his voice at times and making affectations in his delivery that are off-putting, to put it mildly. "Burn Burn Burn" sounds like a B-side from
Red Pill Blues, running any live instruments through a cheese grater and instead giving their would-be prominent role on the track to pretentious saxophone arrangements. "All Night" suffers from the same issues. The sax-driven hook is cool enough, but it oozes a level of self-seriousness that kneecaps its enjoyable aspects. I won't even get too much into the features, as they're all seemingly stuck in the same time loop from 2017. K-pop superstar Lisa offers a cameo on "Priceless," and she has absolutely no chemistry with Levine, who is almost two decades her senior.
Is
Love Is Like a triumphant return to form? I think the album thinks of itself as such, but I have trouble accepting such a premise. There's obviously a lot more guitars this time, and they're often glassy and serve the compositions well. But nothing here is really
special, far from it actually. Everything is
competent, but that's about as much as you can say for it. There's no denying Maroon 5 comprises a group of genuinely talented musicians, and their early work will always hold a place in my heart for being a pillar of my formative musical years, but nostalgia can't help this album be what it aspires to be while barely trying. At least it's not as bad as
Jordi, and there's a couple songs I think will work into my rotation, so for the sake of ending on as positive a note as possible, I'll give the band that much. It's not much, but it's something, I guess.
Love Is Like is painfully
average.
