The Circle is complete...

Late on the evening of Sunday 31st July 2011 in Lisbon's Parque de Belavista, America's finest hard rock quintet - Bon Jovi - finished the last show of The Circle Tour and it's extension, the Bon Jovi Live Tour, bringing the curtain down on 135 shows, played through the last 17 months and playing to over 3 MILLION people. Not bad going really when you consider the album that started it all, 2009's The Circle, was something of an accident, and a poorly reviewed one at that.

Writing for the album was originally meant to be just a handful of new tracks for a Greatest Hits release, but with the state the world was in the band suddenly had a lot to say and thus The Circle was written, recorded and released within a few short months. Like most Bon Jovi fans I was of course ecstatic the band were releasing a new album so quickly, especially after the album/tour cycle for the phenomenally successful 'experiment' that was 2007's Lost Highway; the subsequent tour for this album played 99 shows to just over 2 MILLION people.

Anyway, back to the point. The Circle was the bands worst reviewed album ever, bar 7800 Fahrenheit. Research for this article shows a few positive reviews: there are lots of people raving about it on Amazon, for example, but they don't really count as professional reviews. I even wrote a review of the album on Amazon.co.uk and gave it a bit of a kicking.

It's a glossy, slick, impeccable and no doubt incredibly expensive production, but the whole album came across like a Snow Patrol or U2 album; layer upon layer of sound (bordering on over-produced), shimmery/jangly guitars. It wasn't good to hear Bon Jovi trying to ape their peers - it almost felt desperate - Superman Tonight bears such a similarity to Snow Patrol's Signal Fire, it may as well have been sung by Snow Patrol!

My main dislike of the album largely centred around one particular track on the album, a track called Live Before You Die. It doesn't take a genius to figure out from the title, what this song might be about, but despite the message it attempts to get across it's a track so desperately maudlin that it borders on morbid. Even worse, it's horribly saccharine and is so bad it actually undoes all the good work before it and drags the rest of the album down. When importing the album on to iTunes I made sure I left this one out. Listening to the album with the offending track removed actually makes for a far more enjoyable listening experience. Indeed after of listening to the album and

But almost two years since the release of the album, almost two years since that first scathing review, after attending 3 shows in 17 months and hearing a large portion of the tracks in a live setting, I have grown to appreciate the album a lot more, which wasn't difficult as considering the way I felt about it initially - the only way was up! The album has been a mainstay on my iPod for nearly 2 years now! Yes, it's still glossy (and always will be) but the feeling of desperation has faded to be replaced by one of...evolution and experimentation.

Just like the Nashville country scene heavily influenced Lost Highway, this album is an experiment - a dalliance - with shiny-shiny, over-produced corporate rock the likes of Goo Goo Dolls and U2 are so good at. It's Bon Jovi's attempt to join the mainstream, even though they already are (and always have been) mainstream, maybe they just tried a little too hard to sound like someone else with this effort?

It's still got the fist-pumping anthems and catchy hooks, and there's a definite Springsteen-esque, blue-collar defiance in the air, but it doesn't rock quite as hard as we were promised, pre-release, by Richie Sambora; it's always on the edge of being amazing but never quite makes it, which is a shame as every track I've heard live in concert from this album totally cooks, thanks largely to the masterful, face-melting guitar work of the legendary Richie Sambora.

Love's The Only Rule, for example, has a pop-synth intro, which alarmed me at first, but I grew to love the song thanks to the great guitar work and uplifting mood of the track. But, like I said above, the live version of this does go the extra mile - Sambora takes this song and runs with it, layering on some beefy riffing and other fancy tricks to really draw the best out of it. It helps that Richie Sambora is a man unleashed on stage. He does the most fantastic work on the studio albums, but it's in the live milieu that he really does his best work and completely earns his status as my favourite guitarist...ever.

So, in summary, while it's not quite as good as Crush, Lost Highway or Have A Nice Day, it's not far off. The Circle isn't all that bad and is well worth a download. The Circle is complete, but the evolution of Bon Jovi continues...and as a band that can afford to experiment, I'm looking forward to the next incarnation...