Overexposed Review

OVEREXPOSED
Maroon 5
2012
A&M/Octone
Prod. by Max Martin, Noah “Mailbox” Passovoy, Shellback, et. al.

Those of you buying Overexposed to learn more about Maroon 5 as a band had best steer clear. Overexposed is clearly an Adam Levine affair, and it’s a series of pop songs that ping-pong between their own hit, “Payphone,” and an imitation of the pop stylings of Coldplay.

Perhaps similarly to Mylo Xyoto, you’ll occasionally wonder if there really is a band behind Adam Levine. The first three songs do very little to justify the album as anything other than an Adam Levine solo record, including the six-writers-pop-starlet “Payphone,” which has never very much impressed me beyond a nice drum line on the verses. However, the guitarist, James Valentine (who helps to write a third of the songs on the album, though not the guitar-heavy ones) comes to life on “Lucky Strike,” a moment that finally aims for the energy of “Moves Like Jagger” last year. The rest of the band is hidden behind your standard synth-pop backing, but it’s a nice reminder that there IS another member to Maroon 5.

However, album then sinks back into washed out pop nonsense. It’s perhaps telling that I have trouble differentiating most of these songs from Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” These aren't especially good pop hooks or productions, and it's overall a very meandering affair. An effort is made to return focus to bass player Mickey Madden on “Lady Killer” (for which Madden actually receives a writing credit) but it’s not quite enough to make his presence notable. The only break from the monotony of completely disposable candy before the finale is the ninth track, “Sad," which is perfectly fine but not lyrical or virtuosic enough to propel it beyond the album. The finale, “Beautiful Goodbye,” is destined to become a moderately popular single or concert closer, but it’s still not especially different from anything before it. There are a couple of iTunes bonus songs that fail to impress any memories upon me, leaving the original finale as the superior place to stop.

Credit must be given to drummer Matt Flynn for his mostly thankless job as a drummer on what really amounts to a pop album. Flynn manages to consistently contribute lines that are more interesting than the songs require without ever distracting the listener from the song. Flynn’s drums on this album are actually a strong example of the kind of more technical drumming I like, in comparison to the stylings of Peart on Rush songs.

Spotify seems to have an exclusive performance of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” that drops all performance by members other than Levine, Valentine, and rhythm guitarist Jesse Carmichael. It perhaps summarizes the entire experience that no part is truly impressive or even exciting, no matter how pretty Levine’s voice can be, as the instrumentation never comes in to back him up.

I booted up “Songs About Jane,” the breakthrough album with “This Love” and “Harder to Breathe,” for the first time in years yesterday for comparison’s sake. It opened my eyes and saddened me as I laid witness to the fact that these are talented players when given the opportunity to actually perform. Here, Maroon 5 is effectively reduced to Levine and session musicians.

2/5
HIGHLIGHTS: “Daylight,” “Lucky Strike”
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: “One More Night,” “Doin’ Dirt”
CATALOG CHOICE: Songs About Jane
NEXT STOP: A Rush Of Blood To The Head, Coldplay
AFTER THAT: C’est Chic, Chic

Bangarang Review

BANGARANG

Skrillex
2011

Big Beat, Atlantic

Prod. by Skrillex et. al

See, this is why genre classifications suck. There are too many arguments as to what kind of music Skrillex puts out; while most people say that Skrillex is dubstep, dubstep purists will tell you that he’s either making “brostep” (a subgenre that seems to have been invented simply to define Skrillex and musicians inspired by Skrillex) or he’s just making house music. And, if I were trying to classify Skrillex’s newest EP, I’d be hard-pressed to actually tell you what Skrillex’s genre identity would be, and a track-by-track breakdown seems to be the only fitting way to write about the EP.

Skrillex’s Bangarang does not open strong; its first track, “Right In”, is a tragically standard wobble-bass affair, and while fans of the genre will still probably enjoy it, the song is not recruiting material. The track “Bangarang” (ft. Sirah) luckily picks things up with an excellent hook and set of vocal samples. Both tracks features vocal snippets throughout. These two songs, along with most of what’s available here, are certainly a bit different from his previous material, but not innovative in terms of the genre.

The writing collaborations are certainly of importance, and the first is with the absolutely legendary band The Doors. Shockingly, The Doors’ influence really does come through on multiple sections of “Breakn’ A Sweat,” but it would have been nice to not hear the words “Come on, baby, light my fire” in the song. In fact, it would’ve been nice to hear almost no traces of the stoner jam at all. Fans of The Doors will find themselves mostly disappointed in the track, as the song takes its cues from songs like “Light My Fire” and “Riders On The Storm.” A dance remix of these slower, more meditative songs goes against everything that makes those songs enjoyable. The Doors influences here just don’t work, and a heavier lean towards party songs like “Break On Through” and “Love Her Madly” would make a whole lot more sense. As it is, the track feels like one of the less interesting “YouTube dubstep remixes” of rock classics.

Thankfully, “The Devil’s Den”, a collaboration between Skrillex and Wolfgang Gartner, practically swoops in and saves the album, a high-energy video game party that this album desperately needed. The chiptune elements are reminiscent of the best stuff from the Street Fighter II and early PlayStation days, and they work fantastically with some thudding bass thrown under them. Skrillex is suddenly willing to let the energy tone down without having a gimmicky interview (“Breakn’ A Sweat”) and even comes up with some new patterns for his particular brand of wobble-bass and high-pitched electrical whines. If nothing else, it’s a supremely attractive song, and the first song you should probably hear from this album.

The next track and final writing collaboration on the album, “Right On Time,” is only notable for its all-too-short breakdown, a jumpy robot-freak out surrounded by incredibly repetitive club music and vocal samples. It’s not a very interesting track. The next track, “Kyoto”, invokes the return of rapper Sirah, opening with goofy “oriental” synthline that fails to impress. While Skrillex does respond to Sirah’s demand, “Yo, Skrill, drop it hard,” the track eventually turns into a heavy-metal inspired rap track (down to the shitty power chords.) This might be more interesting if Sirah’s verse was especially interesting, but it isn’t. Skip both of these songs.

Fans of the breakthrough single “Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites” will finally have something to enjoy in “The Summit”, a song featuring Ellie Goulding that takes on a similar electronica journey. It’s very pretty, it’s meditative, and it’s shockingly balladeering for Skrillex, never turning to wobble-bass or extremely high-pitched synth. The vocal fragments are reminiscent of the sort DJ Earworm will place in his year-end United States of Pop mash-ups, and the laid-back music is certainly more reminiscent of Earworm’s work than most of Skrillex’s stuff. I’m a big fan of Earworm’s work, and maybe it’s because I’ve felt that Earworm’s stuff has fallen off in quality over the last year, but I feel like I got something pretty wonderful out of “The Summit.”

It’s unfortunate, really. When Skrillex is doing what I might expect him to do on Bangarang, it consistently fails to be interesting. But when he turns towards chiptunes and ballads, I see the musician who caught my attention with his “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” EP who knows how to innovate and write some really classic music. iTunes and Spotify both feature orchestral suites of Skrillex’s older material, and it becomes evident that the man is definitely capable of producing some really brilliant and stirring music, and that certainly shows in the album’s best track. While something good can still definitely come out of Skrillex working within his usual confines in a song like “The Devil’s Den,” the magic definitely hits less often than it should, and this album will too often leave you wondering why you liked Skrillex in the first place.

2/5

HIGHLIGHTS: “The Devil’s Den” w/ Wolfgang Gartner, “The Summit” (ft. Ellie Goulding)

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: “Breakn’ A Sweat”, “Right On Time”

CATALOG CHOICE: Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites EP

NEXT STOP: DJ Earworm, “United States of Pop 2008-2011”

AFTER THAT: Susumu Hirawasa, “Paprika OST”