Heellloooo
So i've had bounce for nigh on a month now, and I have to say overall I'm thouroughly pleased with it. I'm gonna break it down to the positive and the negatives to nmake it simple...
POSITIVES!!!!
1. IT ROCKS...yes big guitars, big drums, and even bigger chorus's. This is more like Bon Jovi of yestur-year
2. Gets the hairs on the back of your neck on end, charges you with energy!
3. Relatively good mixture of rockers and ballads
4. Kind of reminds me of a mixture of their albums put in a blender with a modern sound...kind of positive kind of bad.
OK so...my NEGATIVE THOUGHTS (there ahs to be a few)
1. Song length. Why are the songs, and resulting album so short. It is as if they are tailor made for radio. I mean 3 minutes on a few tracks. Its really quite obvious their after airplay!! I would have prefered more detailed full works on the albums, and then edited for single releases like in the past.
2. Guitar Solo's, or the lack of kind of. I know this has been talked to death..,but I have to give my 2 cents. Yes there are guitar solo's- on only a few tracks...and Richie is raelly holding back. And there is a differenece between playing "tastefully" and then PURPOSFULLY holding back just so it sells.
Some songs on bounce really call for some, ripping guitar...and wher you expect it to come in it just doesn't
kind of an anti-climax in a number of songs. Even right side of wrong which has the longest solo, is not very well constructed or written...it fits the chords but i mean its not really memorable.
I understand that solo's dont have to be long to be great both PRAYER and BAD NAME have only short 8 bar solo's. AND they are amazing, they involve exciting sounds and techniques which fit the music. I think the Everyday solo is the only relativly good one.
3. Not progressing musically.. well i dont mean this in a negative way really. What I mean is I wish the epic songs were actually epic like Dry County. I feel like they have so much potential to pull something off like that again. But that wont keep them in the charts will it!
OVERALL
Overall its a fantatic great big rock bon jovi album, that I love! However I feel like they are really really bending to the contemporary needs of radio, listeners. And i think the overall result suffers a bit because of that.
In my ideal world Bounce woul have been..
1. .perhps a little darker, still positive forward momentum but something a bit more dark and deep.
2. LONGER longer songs, longer album. More depth to the songs epic etc
3. Guitar solo's that were better thought out, rather than one take mediocre ones
4. More keybaords in the mix. I feel David has been left out of the picture on this one! Or at least in the mix.
I think that bounce is about equal with crush but they are both diferent records. At first I thought bounce was miles better than crush. But after hearing the whole album, I like them about the same. THey have different sounds obviously and differnet messages. Crush is more pop and Bounce is more Rock..Bounce is more deep thatn Crush (beinga party album) but I thnk the compositions on Crush are not worse than bounce. Musically they are about the same, and lyrically perhaps marginally better on Bounce.
I actually like crush, now It doesn't sound like bon jovi for half the album. but the songs are still really great!
Hopefully the boys next record will see them getting back to some serious work (KTF & These Days), where they aren't contemplating the possibilty of radio stardom again, and they make it for an artistic reason and for the fans.
But in the mean time I'm happy to pump my fist in the air and shout along at the concerts to Bounce and Crush stuff!!!!!
Rock on peeps
TrAcK7