What does Maroon 5 sound like? The best way I can even begin to describe their sound is if you took N’Sync and put them in a blender with Stevie Wonder. This may sound like a recipe for disaster, but it actually works out to a T. Maroon 5 is a tight, funky live R&B band that incorporates soulful arrangements, catchy choruses, lush harmonies and instrumental breakdowns that are all from the school of Mr. Wonder. However, the boy band sound comes in as lead singer Adam Levine goes up for some of the falsetto-vocal runs as he croons about his lost love Jane, hence the title of the album. Justin Timberlake actually does have quite a bit of musical talent, whether you want to admit it or not, and Maroon 5 has, most likely not intentionally, found a way to bring this poppy boy band vibe to music that would satisfy an old school R&B fan. If Ray Charles is your cup of tea, the track “Sunday Morning” will give you goose bumps with its laid back in the beat piano line that could be heard in a chapel on, ironically, Sunday morning. It goes up-tempo with an instrumental breakdown before the outro with some serious vocal freestyling that would get the choir up and signing along. It’s not gospel music per se, but the vibe certainly is.

Cue up the slowly grooving keyboard tone on the song “The Sun” and the Stevie Wonder comparison is absolutely inevitable. Is it a rip-off? Absolutely not, but Levine is not afraid to let fans know that Stevie is a huge influence on the band’s sound.

Structurally, the songs all have a very standard pop arrangement: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus and then outro. The result is a disc full of songs that are all potential radio hits, which is going to give this album enough legs to keeping selling strong into 2005.

There is what sounds like an interesting studio trick on the song “Not Coming Home,” as Maroon 5 and producer Matt Wallace take what sounds like crystal clear studio recording and made it sound like a live recording with screaming girls in the crowd. Levine may have simply added backing vocals at a later point, but regardless of how it was done technically, it’s a nice change of pace from the all-studio sound of the rest of the album.

Sonically, the voice of Levine is what many will latch onto, but the sound quality of the live drums and the lightly crunchy and waa-waa guitar parts sound the best to me. The Middle Eastern-influenced guitar riff that begins the track “Shiver” is a prime example of this quality recording. The brief waa-waa guitar solo in the song “Tangled” is another nice piece of guitar work that sounds great and fits the song beautifully. The Stevie Wonder keyboard sound you have heard a million times in the song “Superstitious” is used on many of the tunes on Songs About Jane. The sound isn’t as grainy and organic as the ‘70s recording, but the Maroon 5 keyboard parts are almost equally funky.

I can’t begin to say enough good things about Song About Jane. I wish I had discovered how great they were years ago. They have restored a little bit of my faith in the fact that a band can still come along and make music that speaks to the masses while also appealing to a jaded music critic like myself. Even if you have become tired of hearing the radio hits that Maroon 5 has already chalked up, you have to get this album and hear the rest of the hits on the album because it’s filled with them, from the first song to the last.