'Trying' Too Hard to Experiment This Time

Perfectopop's Best Albums of 2009:
#20 Lines, Vines, and Trying Times by Jonas Brothers

It's good for artists to explore new territory. Especially when they're splattered all over Disney Channel's prime-time line-up and are constantly being written off as cheap Hanson knock-offs. But as the Jonas Brothers proved this summer, exploration can be a bit risky. They stumble and fall as often as they discover glorious new sounds. And some of the places they go aren't all that pretty. Lines, Vines, and Trying Times is an album that suffers from too much experimentation and too little cohesiveness. It's full of great songs, but they're from such diverse genres that the whole is less than a sum of its parts. The JoBros' journey has several spectacular stops, but overall, it's a rather bumpy ride.

The album begins beautifully with the rockable, danceable "World War III," which is, in my opinion, the best song the JoBros have ever recorded. The discovery and addition of a horn section was certainly a great step in their sonic journey.

The album continues with "Paranoid," a brilliant and downright respectable rock song, catchy but much more subtle than the usual fare from Disney-endorsed bubble-punkers. Then "Fly With Me" veers back into cutesy wish-upon-a-star territory, but its great melody and lovely orchestration keep it sweet, not saccharine.

Based on the album's first three songs, it sounds like the Jonases have learned to walk the fine line between the sugary pop their younger fans crave and the mature rock that will earn them a little respect. "Poison Ivy," though not stellar, doesn't detract from this image.

But then, the album takes a turn for the worse, hopping around from one genre to the next. "Hey Baby," "Before the Storm," "What Did I Do to Your Heart," and "Much Better" are all fine songs on their own, but placed back-to-back, they rudely jolt listeners from one genre to another and make Lines, Vines, and Trying Times sounds less like an album than a poorly-conceived mix CD. They're great songs: "Hey Baby" is bluesy and pretty mature; "Before the Storm" will tug at the heartstrings of all but the most cynical and vehement Miley Cyrus haters; "What Did I Do to Your Heart" probably wouldn't make me want to claw my eardrums out if I didn't hate fiddles so much; and "Much Better" is hands-down the most fun song on the album. Everything about it is deliciously campy, from its not-so-subtle jab at Taylor Swift to its retro sound that sounds like it belongs at one rockin' party... in a nursing home.

With "Black Keys," the JoBros get the album back on the pop-punk-with-the-occasional-heartfelt-ballad track they traversed so well on their last two albums. Not many 16 year-olds can write and perform a ballad as well as Nick Jonas, and this sentimental-not-sappy song doesn't disappoint. I find it even more moving than Nick's last ballad, the unforgettable "A Little Bit Longer," which is kind of saying something, especially if you've seen Nick play "A Little Bit Longer" live.

But then the JoBros take a wrong turn and end up in a nasty spot: the misguided hip-rock tune "Don't Charge Me for the Crime." I know the boys wanted to work with Common, but couldn't they have come up with something more... sensible? The song is about helping a friend rob a bank and the moral dilemma they face: help out your friend, or uphold the law? Um, guys, there's not much of a moral dilemma there... Helping a friend rob a bank isn't really helping your friend. Besides, the Jonas Brothers seem like the last people in the world who would ponder the morality of bank robbery. They wear purity rings, for gosh sake. The song is sloppy, strange, and unbelievable.

"Turn Right" is another tender ballad and one of the best-placed songs on the album: "Black Keys" was a beautiful ballad; "Turn Right" is bland and juvenile in comparison. But with the gawd-awful "Don't Charge Me for the Crime" sandwiched between the two, listeners forget that "Black Keys" was ten times better than "Turn Right" and get on their knees and thank the JoBros for only doing one song with Common.

"Don't Speak" is a well-orchestrated rocker and a song that shows that the Jonases have some real promise as grown-up rock stars. If you cut out all the songs between "Poison Ivy" and "Don't Speak," you'd have a wonderful little rock EP. With the entire album intact, it at least provides a clear road map for future Jonas journeys: walk the line between mature rock songs and Nick's ballads, don't get ensnared by any appealing genre-jumping experiments, and try to make the album flow a bit better next time.