Maroon 5

Maroon 5 are not my favourite band; nevertheless I enjoyed the direction their latest two albums had taken (less whining, more rocking, in my view) and so when it became clear on SISTIC that they were coming to Singapore to promote their latest album "Hands All Over", I grabbed my trusty and reliable rock concert mates and booked us a couple of tickets for the gig.


I have to say that I was in better seats this time than I have ever been in for a rock concert (not counting Muse of course - Pit A is Pit A. You don't get better than that) before. Somehow, though, the show felt less loud, less powerful and less big than I've got used to. I suspect this came down to the fact that Maroon 5 - unusually for a touring rock band - had absolutely no props with them. There was no fancy backdrop, no use of balls/balloons/confetti, minimal variation on the lighting, and - rather noticeably - no screens onto which the onstage action was projected for the benefit of those sitting at the far ends of the Indoor Stadium. If you were stuck in the back seats, therefore, tough - this was not a gig that was very forgiving on those who went for the cheap seats.


This is not to say that the music wasn't good or that the band didn't have chemistry. Lead singer Adam Levine's voice works wonderfully live and he had good stage energy. The songs, too, came out well - though it was quite obvious that the best songs of the night were actually songs off their first album. Harder to Breathe, an acoustic version of She Will Be Loved, This Love and Sunday Morning were the best performances of the night, while Secret was the song that they were most adventurous with - even splicing it with Michael Jackson's Billie Jean at one point. I rather wish that they had been more adventurous with the songs off the latest album as well: there's a good acoustic version of Misery sitting on my laptop and it would have been nice to hear it live. The newer songs were played to radio-perfection though and more's the pity.

All in all I have to say that it was a good night out, but that the lack of special effects 'oomph' factor and special 'live only' songs gave me the impression that the band weren't really putting in much effort into this gig. Perhaps that had something to do with the crowd - it was a pretty pathetic crowd down on the stadium floor as far as I could see. Don't think they even stood up and started dancing till This Love started playing and how sad is that?