Well, I finally got my hands on my copy of The Circle, and unfortunately my first reaction has been massive disappointment. I know I was setting myself up for it to some degree; I was hoping for the hard rock power of Bounce mixed with the solid ballad writing demonstrated on Lost Highway.
To start off with, Jon promised a hard rock sound on this album. But if you set it up next to Bounce, it falls quite a bit short. It’s really the same radio-friendly, pop-rock that the band delivered on Crush and Have a Nice Day. There are very few tracks on the disc that even remotely qualify as hard.
Also, I despise this type of packaging. Most of my storage that I have for CDs is designed for jewel cases, and not this new ‘environnmentally friendly’ type. The cardboard cases only fit into one of my CD racks, and it’s filling up rapidly. Also, I have a terrible time actually getting the discs out of the case without getting fingerprints on the front. It’s annoying. (If anyone has a brilliant method for how to get the disc out of this type of case, please leave a comment. I’m probably missing something really obvious here.)
Over the next 12 days, I’ll break down the album into individual tracks and review each one separately. That way I can analyze each song on its individual merits, and dive deeper into each one. It’ll also give me the space to separate each song from my first impression of it. I’ll do a final review of the overall album after the last track review.
I’ll give the album another listen tonight. That way I can give it my undivided attention, and hopefully notice more of the depth of the album and pay more attention to the lyrics.
Track List:
- We Weren’t Born to Follow
- When We Were Beautiful
- Work For The Working Man
- Superman Tonight
- Bullet
- Thorn in My Side
- Live Before You Die
- Brokenpromiseland
- Love’s The Only Rule
- Fast Cars
- Happy Now
- Learn to Love
Related posts:
Pingback: Review: We Weren’t Born To Follow « Blueshadow’s Bon Jovi Blog
I don’t understand why you would be disappointed by the level “hardness” of this album. If you are looking for really hard rock, why are you looking for it from Bon-Jovi? You seem to compare this album and others to Bounce. Bounce was a poor album by Bon Jovi standards, both in terms of sound quality, songwriting and commercial success. Bounce, Fahrenheit, These days: these were failures due mainly to a lack of songwrinting and production focus. There is a reason that they shook up the production crews after each one of these albums.
The songs on this album are very well put together, and are more indicative of what Bon Jovi has been about since their inception. This was one of their more creative albums, and the total package is the best since at LEAST the Crush Album, possibly as good as Keep the Faith. In fact, if Bon Jovi’s voice had not deteriorated so much in the 20 years since Faith, it may have been better.
If you are looking for harder rock, get Saints of LA or a contemporary album… not Bonjovi. That is like buying a Cadillac to use as a race car.
In keeping with past albums, the cut they chose as their first single is IMO one of the least impressive songs on the new album. Working man, Tjorn in my side,Bullet, Broken Promiseland, Love’s the only rule… there are a hell of a lot of triples and maybe a home run or two in there.
Pingback: Entertainment Weekly names The Circle one of the Worst of 2009 « Blueshadow’s Bon Jovi Blog