Every now and then, when Jared Leto isn’t playing bit-part characters for the silver screen, winning Oscars, or drinking from the fountain of youth, he occasionally finds time to cobble together a collection of songs with his stadium-filling band. Though just barely enough to release an album. Guitarist Tomo Milicevic, increasingly used to the sedentary lifestyle, has taken to video gaming for a living. And God knows what Shannon Leto gets up to.
There is almost a decade between the critically acclaimed ‘This Is War’ and ‘America’. This of course has left plenty of time for the poles of creativeness to shift, and for the band’s musical compasses to realign. But really, this should surprise no one: ‘America’ is the natural successor to 2013’s ‘Love, Lust, Faith, and Dreams’, which foreshadowed increasingly chart-friendly songs.
Further down the evolutionary line is an album of mainly three-something minute songs, clichéd sound-bites currently popular with synth-laden number ones, and mealy verses that soon give over to catchy choruses. ‘Dangerous Night’ and ‘Rescue Me’, to name a few, are practically begging to be remixed – but the latter and ‘Hail To The Victor’ also eerily reminiscent of certain cheesy dancefloor fillers from the late noughties.
Perhaps the biggest surprise with ‘America’ is the marketing deception behind it. Apart from an overt two-sentence verse in ‘Walk On Water’, it has virtually no other political message. No doubt this will please most fans, but it comes off as leaving the album a little empty. The good news is there’s only one filler track, ‘Monolith’, which is nothing more than an extended intro to ‘Love Is Madness’ (although a case could be made for the final track ‘Rider’). This is a welcome departure from the band’s last release which – absurdly – had four filler tracks, making it resemble an EP more than a legitimate album.
Then comes the matter of Shannon Leto’s writing and vocal debut on ‘Remedy’. A good track, but not really Thirty Seconds To Mars friendly. It would have made a great b-side or bonus track – if the band ever managed to write enough spillover to actually have a b-side catalogue. It only raises more questions about how much dedication the band can afford towards the music: to the point where, what could be a run-of-the-mill Liam Gallagher track has found its place on an album supposedly about political transformation in contemporary America. One hears it again with ‘Dawn Will Rise’, a track that sounds limp and unfinished.
There are a few songs, however, to justify Thirty Seconds To Mars’s remarkable success worldwide. ‘Great Wide Open’ is simply beautiful from start to finish. And ‘Live Like A Dream’, surely, is guaranteed to cement its place in the set-list for the remainder of the Monolith tour: the lyrics are Jared at his philosophical best, even if the chorus is just a platitude of “oh, oh, ohs”.
The guitars and drums, for the most part, have all been left pretty much by the wayside for ‘America’, and one has to wonder if a Jared Leto solo project would sound much different. It’s also possible that the record will sound very dated by the time Thirty Seconds to Mars release their next album, or the next one after that. Time will tell.
neilwrightwrites 