Their skills honed by decades on the road, these guys are playing as well as they ever have. Until the songwriting goes slack in the second half, "What About Now" represents a dramatic improvement over 2009's "The Circle," a big unseasoned tuber of an album.Įven Jovi haters have never thrown stones at the group's musicianship. The group has not sounded this driven, or awake, in the studio in years. But fans will find the album a focused and energetic exercise in the sort of fist-raising, fundamentally conservative arena rock that Bon Jovi can still do as well as anybody - and that is still valuable, no matter how radically times have changed. Bon Jovi is a band with no interest in breaking ground, and "What About Now" is not likely to introduce the group to those who aren't previously committed. He's got "a lot to give," plenty of steaming platters of musical comfort food ready to go in his soul kitchen, but is the pool of enthusiastic takers drying up? Is there a place left for a rock group that values hard work and perseverance rather than novelty and imagination? He allows his character to speak to his anxieties. Here, Bon Jovi sings with a vigor and believability that the rest of the song can't approach - and not just because he's more convincing as a rankled rocker than he ever could be as a journalist or freedom fighter. He allows himself a grumble about the fate of CBGB all that's left there, he tells us, are the T-shirts, and those are imported from Japan. "I sold my drums to make ends meet/The band broke up, we had to eat," sings Bon Jovi, in the sort of unsurprising but bluntly effective couplet that is common on the sinewy album. Here, the singer plays a punk musician who's been sidelined by cruel economic necessity. So far, so good - and so compassionate, as Bon Jovi loves to be.īut the key to the song, and perhaps the whole album (which comes out Tuesday), is contained in its second verse. By the time the song ends, the veteran rock star has tried on the hat of a teacher, a farmer and a union man whose job has been shipped overseas.Īll these characters are proletarians struggling to fit in to a changed world - they've worked hard, but the job skills they've cultivated are no longer in demand. We haven't even reached the minute mark of "What's Left of Me," from Bon Jovi's new album "What About Now," and already Jon Bon Jovi has voiced the roles of a veteran newspaperman and a demobilized soldier.