Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Bon Jovi
Label: Island Records
Release: 2013
Running time: 51:36
Rating: 1.5/5
Sometimes you have to wonder who or what you have to thank for being handed such a special, blessed honor. In this case, the honor of writing a piece or two about the new Bon Jovi album.
“What About Now” is (once again, just) an album that can be compared to the albums released after »These Days«. So, welcome to the story of Bon Jovi for the new millennium. All quiet on the western front, you might say. The songs from “What About Now” could turn up on any of the albums titled »The Circle«, »Crush«, »Bounce«, »Have a Nice Day«. Anyone expecting an album from the bright, shining days of the eighties and early nineties, or whatever else they might want from Bon Jovi, will, after a listen to »What About Now«, very quickly rename the new album »What About No!«.
Bon Jovi are again keeping up an MTV-friendly sound that serves up a soft-sounding rock image, one that flirts boldly with some kind of heartland rock rhetoric, which The Killers cultivate far better. The title track in particular is an unbelievable cross between The Killers and Bruce Springsteen. That’s What The Water Made Me aims straight for the middle of that very comparison once again. If you were looking for a piece of the new album where Bon Jovi brazenly “copy” from Springsteen, you’d instantly nominate the mid-tempo country sing-along What’s Left Of Me, which in one of its transitions, with a simple, well-thought-out, ignition-sparking yet utterly banal combination of unison tones, Cdur–Amol-Gdur-Fdur, even recalls the basic line of With Or Without You by U2. And then there’s Army Of Love for the big finale, where Bon Jovi want to sound typically trendy alt-pop-rocker in the manner of bands like One Republic. And then comes the ballad Thick As Thieves. Heads up. Just piano and Jon’s newfangled falsetto (robbed of convincing emotional delivery) in the first half of the song. Want a hint what the song reminds you of? Coldplay.
Anyone who isn’t bothered by what Bon Jovi have been doing in the new millennium will be happy with the new album. If you don’t know the history of Bon Jovi, it’s clear that “What About Now” is a very decent rock album that just wants to survive in a commercially lucrative way. To sound friendly to MTV and radio. So “What About Now” keeps on “wholeheartedly” (or corporately – you be the judge) trying to buy up stadiums and arenas around the world. Jon doesn’t convince. You don’t feel any real fire in the vocals. The charge, the power and the emotional creation are gone, the things that once, a long, long time ago, got him into the league of the most attractive big-balls hard rock singers. When you run into the ballad Amen or later, near the end, The Fighter, his “dried-out” voice stands out again (unfortunately, and unwelcome), stripped of all color, passion and charge.
The guitar caliber of someone like Richie Sambora likewise makes you think, condemned as he is to the bare stance of plain chords in the repetitive G major C major D major combination of a song like Pictures Of You, which somewhere in a transition even swerves off to borrow E minor – truly a grueling artistic effort. His solos also can’t (or aren’t allowed to?) shine with the core and intensity of the full-blooded hard rock stampede of Bon Jovi’s golden days. Sambora is a perfect blues rock guitarist. But “What About Now” simply has no family ties to the blues, the way the classic Bon Jovi studio albums did. So it’s clear that Sambora sticks around in the band purely for the rustle of greenbacks. His guitar genius remains completely untapped.
So “What About Now” keeps up the tried-and-tested outline of stadium-friendly arena rock! The soft rock the band needs for another massive world tour, so the multi-thousand-headed hordes of the planet can jump up and down to it once again. On that score, okay, but on the score of originality the question arises: »Why do you keep at it, boys?«. Play as much as you like, perform as much as you like, but you don’t need any more studio albums. On the European side of the planet, Def Leppard likewise sold off their artistic dignity with experiments in maintaining MTV-“friendly music” through studio album releases. Luckily they can’t fill arenas, because Joe Elliot just isn’t a chiseled pretty-boy stallion like Jon. Oh, those happy and carefree boys. Do tell, is there anything they’re lacking in life? Once “golden” boys, gnawed away by comfort.
Lineup
Jon Bon Jovi – vocals, guitar
Richie Sambora – guitar, backing vocals
Hugh McDonald – bass guitar, backing vocals
Tico Torres – drums
David Bryan – keyboards, backing vocals
Production
John Shanks, Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora
Track list
1. Because We Can
2. I’m With You
3. What About Now
4. Pictures of You
5. Amen
6. That’s What the Water Made Me
7. What’s Left of Me
8. Army of One
9. Thick as Thieves
10. Beautiful World
11. Room at the End of the World
12. The Fighter
