Maroon 5

Travis Schneider*
Stevie Nicks, Megan Thee Stallion, and H.E.R. stop by to try to help Adam Levine elevate his game, but the lane remains the same

No space is safe from the heaviness of our times — even, it appears, a Maroon 5 record. The tone of Adam Levine and company’s seventh LP is downright elegiac. “Toast to the ones that we lost on the way,” Levine offers on “Memories,” a sweet, somber, genuinely felt ballad, with a melody borrowed from Pachelbel’s Canon. Jordi is named after and dedicated to Jordan Feldstein, the band’s manager and a friend of Adam’s since childhood, who passed away in 2017, just as the band was releasing its last album, Red Pill Blues.

Earlier on the LP, we get the single, “Nobody’s Love,” an elegantly plaintive tune that Levine has said he hopes will “give everyone a moment of peace and reflection” after recent traumas like Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd. Lyrically, the song is almost content-free, just another smooth ditty about moving past heartache, but there’s a certain realist honesty in that, too: Sugary escape has always been what Maroon 5 have done, and, coming from these guys, it’s certainly a better response than forced corporate-branding #BLM signifying. Even the remix of “Memories” with YG and the late Nipsey Hussle, the duo who made “FDT,” doesn’t try to politicize its sentiment of personal loss. Lane, consider yourself stayed in.

 

 

That low-key tone impacts the rest of the record, from “Lost,” a spare, open-hearted ode to finding love in a lonely world, to airy, heart-horny jams “Lovesick” and “Echo.” Much of the album’s energy comes from its impressive slate of guest artists. Megan Thee Stallion swings by to pick up a check and lend a dash of queenly excellence to the standout “Beautiful Mistake”; Zimbabwean-born rapper Bantu helps kick up the stakes over a buoyant groove and arid guitar swipes on “One Light”; and H.E.R. delivers arresting vocals on “Convince Me Otherwise,” a moody Eighties synth-soul escapade that ends up being the album’s peak moment. But there are wasted opportunities too. Stevie Nicks seems to have been in the room for “Remedy,” a well-turned moment of SoCal Seventies soft-rock genuflection, but she’s rendered as not much more than an anonymous backup presence, and the ghost of Juice WRLD wanly floats through the draggy “Can’t Leave You Alone.”

In the end, what the album could use is a few more drink-clinking splashes of summertime fun, but despite the usual army of A-list writers and producers, there isn’t really anything here to rival the sticky, inescapable punch of “Sugar” or “Moves Like Jagger.” A little more escape might’ve been welcome. But whether it’s trying to be light, serious, or somewhere in the middle, Jordi can only get it done in half-measures.

The Animal Collective member transforms guitar riffs by Highlife’s Doug Shaw into modular synth abstractions. Its abrasive tone may not be for everyone, but its funky, egoless spirit is infectious.

Over the past two decades, Animal Collective and its members have produced at least half a dozen albums widely hailed as masterpieces. But what makes AnCo feel so much like a Great Band isn’t just those records—it’s the array of one-offs, collaborations, soundtracks, and idle experiments released between the classics. Every release isn’t guaranteed to blow your mind, or even be especially listenable (take, for example, Avey Tare’s entirely-backwards collaboration with Kría Brekkan or the ear-piercing buzz of Danse Manatee, which might sound unfriendly at first). Instead, Animal Collective’s appeal lies in how they’ve staked out an oasis of aspirational strangeness where anything can happen, and the usual expectations for a critically acclaimed indie rock band need not apply.

In that context, consider A Shaw Deal, an album Animal Collective’s Geologist made with his friend Doug Shaw of Highlife. Its runtime is less than half an hour, and Geologist, aka Brian Weitz, made it as a gift for Shaw’s birthday; still, given its place within the larger AnCo constellation, perhaps it’s not especially odd that the album got a proper release with a label and PR campaign and everything. You suspect this is the kind of thing people in AnCo-land make all the time: These guys live and breathe art, and in a cultural dark age where A.I. threatens to render artistic intent an old-fashioned concept, there’s something kind of noble about how much effort went into an album that’s basically an inside joke.

Geologist made these seven tracks by taking guitar recordings Shaw posted on Instagram during the pandemic and running them through his modular system until it spat out tangles of sound. The acoustic guitar has long been associated with a certain ideal of authenticity, of not needing fancy tech to get your feelings across. Here, that idea goes delightfully out the window. In Geologist’s hands, Shaw’s acoustic guitar sounds like a million other things while still resolutely sounding like itself, its notes sliding from one to another in big, oblong blocks rather than sounding plucked or strummed. “Petticoat” begins in similar territory to the West African-inspired pop doodles on Highlife’s 2010 EP Best Bless. But by the end of the track, its sound evokes a set of rubber chickens being played like a drum kit. On “Ripper Called” Shaw’s guitar could be mistaken for a squabble between woodwinds, before we hear what sounds like a giant sleeping bag being unzipped from the inside. “Route 9 Falls” splinters a fingerpicked snippet into a cascade of notes that suggests standing beneath a waterfall in the freezing cold. It’s abrasive in a purifying way.

As a birthday gift between friends, A Shaw Deal is pretty charming, but what’s in it for the casual fan? It contains no nods to pop, no moments that aim for the Beach Boys-like transcendence that permeates even Animal Collective’s looser and more improvisational releases. Your tolerance for freeform and frequently harsh-sounding guitar music determines whether A Shaw Deal will make it into your regular rotation or slot into the lesser-played ranks of the band’s catalog. But its funky, egoless spirit is infectious: less of a towering individual statement than another vivid shade in the wild splotch of color the members of Animal Collective have left across indie music.

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