Crush is my personal least favourite BJ album, but that doesn't mean I think it's bad. And it was obviously a fantastically successful album to release at the time. There are definitely things I like about it: it's got some good songs, and as has already been said, it's their last album so far to have an average song length higher than 4 minutes 30 seconds (I think). It's a good album for new fans, but once you've heard their back catalogue, you start to realise things like how much It's My Life "borrows" from Prayer, and the same with Just Older and Blood On Blood ... or how Next 100 Years wants to be Dry County but falls short, etc. The most interesting songs I reckon are the ones that try something a bit new: Two Story Town, Say It Isn't So, Captain Crash, Mystery Train, and to an extent Thank You For Loving Me (a more strings than guitar driven ballad) and One Wild Night (with its stop-start dynamics). I'm also not too keen on the way the album just sort of disintegrates in the second half ... there are a fair few demos that would have made for a better flow. Of course, that does become a little understandable when you think about how many changes the album went through since it started off as JBJ's third solo album

Bounce has a special place, as it was about the time that it was first announced that I really started becoming a fan. I agree that its a bit schizophrenic and messy (and the production is far from the best), but there's a great feel of experimentalism to it ... the heavier songs like Undivided and Hook Me Up sitting alongside the epic ballads like Right Side and Joey alongside the more heavier epics like The Distance and Love Me Back To Life. I'd say it was fearless, apart from the fact that nearly all of it is put into the "short song, obvious structure" template ... although not all of it, as the fading out of instruments on Undivided or the sudden cutting out of Hook Me Up shows. While it's not nearly as a complete album as HAND, it takes more risks than that album does, and I gotta admire it for that