Album Review: "What About Now" - Bon Jovi

"What About Now": B+.  What About Now is the tenth album I've reviewed since I started blogging, but the first by Bon Jovi. The pride of Sayreville, New Jersey is my favorite band still recording and touring, and Momma Cuandito and I are going to see them in concert next month. (Their concert which we attended in 2010 is one of the three best I've ever attended.) For all those reasons I was really hoping that their newest album would be dynamite. I am slightly disappointed that I don't like the new offering as much as I'd hoped, but after repeated listenings it has grown on me enough to give it a B+. Not bad, since I was only willing to go with a B- after my first listen. The problem, mostly, is with the ballads. More on that shortly.

In one sense, this new album is constructed in a fashion similar to a good baseball team, with the heavy hitters positioned in the middle of the lineup. You'll find the big knockers on the new album at numbers 3, 4 and 6 in the track order: the title track at # 3, followed by my favorite song, Pictures Of You, and then the sixth track, That's What The Water Made Me. (Yes, my analogy to baseball would have been much better if the best songs were at "3-4-5" instead of "3-4-6," but I'm not going to let a little thing like the difference between "5" and "6" keep me from employing it.) I would hazard a guess that the reason for breaking up the triumvirate is that the hard driving beat among those three favored songs is almost identical. It was apparent from listening to the fourth track following the third track. To have a third immediately succeeding song with the same tempo would have been too obvious, so they inserted the album's slowest song, Amen, in the 5-hole.

The title track, What About Now, is a call to action. You don't get anything done by merely dreaming about it.

You wanna start a fight
You gotta take a swing.
You gotta get your hands in the dirt
To see what the harvest will bring.

The people who make the greatest difference for the betterment of man are those who go beyond the dreaming and wishing stage.

Pictures Of You is, lyrically, a simple admission by the singer that no matter what happens in his life, he can't erase from his mind the images and memories of his former love. Even though the sentiment is not a unique concept -- indeed, it's almost a universal music theme -- the song is classic Bon Jovi, with pulsating drums from the excellent Tico Torres, a super guitar break from Richie Sambora, poetic metaphors in the verses coupled with a bridge that works very nicely, and the two-part harmony that is a signature item on many of the band's best offerings.

The third rocker, That's What The Water Made Me, is another showcase for Torres' mastery of the skins. In my book, he is the unsung hero of the group, working his butt off in concert and in the studio, using all of his kit's apparatus and never missing a beat. The lyrics here are a little obscure, but my take is that it's a Popeye tune: I yam what I yam, so don't try to change me.

As so often happens with new albums these days, some of the better songs on the record are found among the bonus tracks, for which the customer is asked to cough up three extra bucks. Exhibits A and B in that regard are With These Two Hands and Into The Echo, two of the three bonuses. The former song repeats the admonishment of the title track, i.e., spend less time wishing and more time doing. The latter song is harder to decipher, but in a way that's what makes it worth listening to. I believe the singer is revealing that some people have a difficult time expressing their thoughts to another person, so they go off by themselves to sort it all out. Hearing the echo come back at you is like having a conversation with yourself. (Carried to the extreme, that could spell trouble!)

Into the echo, we shout our dreams
Into the echo, we throw our hearts.

Bon Jovi fans can usually count on there being one or two memorable ballads on every album. But the seven slow songs on What About Now are, as a group, the weak links. I'd be willing to carve out as exceptions the love song Thick As Thieves, and possibly Room At The End Of The World for its imagery, but I can think of eight or nine slow tempo songs from other Bon Jovi albums that I prefer over each of the remaining five on What About Now. Addition by subtraction, i.e., lopping off a couple of those inferior ballads, would have made for a better album.

In 2007 Bon Jovi released its first and only country flavored album, Lost Highway. There was some backlash from the band's core fan base which disliked any deviation from straight rock, but that album did prove that Bon Jovi can mix it up. On What About Now there is one song which recalls that style, What's Left Of Me. It is a jaunty mid-tempo pop/country hybrid with plenty of blue grassy mandolin. The cleverly written first person lyrics paint mini-stories of people who have known success but have currently fallen on hard times. Nevertheless, the singer keeps his chin up, hoping the tide will turn soon. The beat is reminiscent of an old Bon Jovi tune from 1994, Someday I'll Be Saturday Night. The theme and the beat of both songs are amazingly similar. Despite previous objections raised by their fans over the incorporation of a country feel, I would like to see Bon Jovi stick their collective big toes in those waters again.