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Old 05-21-2009, 04:24 PM
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Captain Walrus Captain Walrus is offline
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Join Date: 03 Aug 2002
Location: West Sussex, UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crushgen24/88 View Post
Ah Bounce. I'll always remember the Bounce period fondly. It was the first Jovi album I bought on it's day of release, the first tour I followed, and my first show was August 7, 2003 on the Bounce Tour, so it was my first "ride" with the band, as it were. That being said, I think the album is below par, and is honestly way too fractured. It's obvious that the band was trying to ride on the success on It's My Life, while at the same time add more guitar, while giving social commentary on 9/11, and it all comes out to a mishmash. The album has several very good songs (Right Side of Wrong is one of my favorite BJ songs, The Distance, Misunderstood, Undivided, Bounce) some okay at times songs (Love Me Back To Life, You Had Me From Hello, Hook Me Up) and a couple that I'd be happy to never hear again (All About Loving You and Everyday, which are such inferior horrid Xerox's of TYFLYM and IML it's comical) I used to hate Open All Night as well, but I've recently found myself liking it lyrically. The point being though that there is NO flow to the album at all, it moves like a compilation record, and is one of the worst sequenced records ever in my opinion.
Like Brian, the time when Bounce was being recorded was about when I joined the Bon Jovi party (indeed, my first ever Jovitalk post was a thread entitled "Bounce? Who comes up with this stuff?" where I basically said it was a terrible title). And I agree with Javier that some of the promo shows for it were awesome, I've seen footage of Times Square, and I was at Wembley Arena the week after (my first Bon Jovi show), and I will maintain forever that the moment where the riff kicks in after the slow mournful start of Undivided live was an absolutely magical moment, back before anyone knew that some of the songs on here would be among the bands heaviest. When it first came out, I did actually declare this my favourite Bon Jovi album, a position which has loooooong since changed

As an album, it has ups and downs. The production and sequencing are definite bad points ... although I actually quite like some of the effects, the whole think sounds too muffled and flat. The three love ballads are all decidedly average-at-best (this coming from someone who used to love All About Lovin' You), and the fact that the majority of the songs are under four minutes is a travesty, considering how in the decade before, virtually every single the band released was over 5 minutes.

The good points: Just about all of the heavy songs are great, and the band sound invigorated to be playing them. The epic ballads (Right Side, and to a slightly lesser extent Joey) are well written pieces that hark back to 90s Bon Jovi. Misunderstood is a decent pop song, no more and no less. Overall, there are two main things that summarise what I like about this album: 1) The heavier feel of it, and 2) the experimentalism of it ... I hesitate to call it fearless because of the short pop-song structure of too many of the songs, and because they left off some of their most diverse material (Breathe, Postcards etc.), but it definitely covers more ground than any other album they've released this decade.

Overall, I'd say I prefer Crush, but not by a lot. Both have some great songs, and some songs that are definitely not as good, but I'd say Crush fares slightly better in its "middling" songs than Bounce does.

Sorry for the essay!
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