Bon Jovi

Bon Jovi
Lost Highway


Oh, lordy: There's an entire demographic - listeners of easy-listening, harmless, non-challenging country/rock - that will gobble this up in droves at the local Target and/or Wal-Mart. Bon Jovi have been courting fans based upon their past classics for over two decades now, so why stop when the iron is clearly (and bafflingly) still burning hot? Fans of mediocrity rejoice, for New Jersey's biggest bar band is back again!

Lost Highway fuses old-fashioned country with modern-day rock n' roll in the most homogenous way thought possible, no left-turns, no unpredictable passages. Everything here is prim, proper and won't offend anybody, outside of anybody wanting a bit of ingenuity in their music. This is BBQ music to the max: Play it loud, play it soft - nobody will know the difference, as the content is so average you couldn't pick out a favorite lick if you tried.

Like I said, average: With Keith Urban and others doing the whole "country-rock-pop" thing to a finer degree, who needs a Bon Jovi-fied take on "Lost Highway," a Hank Williams standard that's been covered by the likes of Jeff Buckley and Bob Dylan? There is nothing here to hate, but nothing to love either.

"(You Want To) Make a Memory" is only casually intimate, much to the chagrin of lighter-waving "Dead Or Alive"-era Bon Jovi fans, and "We Got It Going On" is a paycheck set to music, much to the chagrin of Big & Rich fans who deserve better too. Only the LeAnn Rimes-featured "Stranger" succeeds on the promise of a real homage, where tasteful country arrangements are lovingly coupled with southern rock sentiments. It's too bad that they don't revisit this territory again over the albums' 12 tracks.

The real problem here is lack of inspiration where inspiration could (and should) have been pouring out endlessly. These songs have a certain electricity that has been tucked away in the corner, out of sight, out of mind. With bands a-plenty giving the Nashville treatment to rock or vise versa, there is no real need to own Lost Highway - buy Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for modern honky-tonk done right. Consider this for completists only.