In Which We Marry A South African Model Of Sorts

Purple Hills

by JANICE LEVENS

Red Pill Blues
Maroon 5
Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, James Valentine, Sam Farrar, Mickey Madden, Matt Flynn, PJ Morton
producers Jason Evigan, John Ryan and Noah Passavoy
November 3rd on 222 and Interscope Records

Now that they are Maroon 7, you might imagine that this band's new album would be less of The Adam Levine Show. But this is not correct, since Maroon 5 is convinced (perhaps justly so) that the source of their success is Levine's supreme voice. On Red Pill Blues, Levine makes a habit of abandoning his trademark falsetto in favor of showing his complete range. His fantastic vocals frequently carried the backing instrumentation in the past, and nothing has really changed in that respect.

Lyrically, Red Pill Blues is more mediocre than bad, but boy is it condescending. On "Denim Jacket" Levine announces

Someone else is taking you home, yeah
Hands on the waist, I used to hold
And I know it's my fault
I'm late to the dance
'Cause you couldn't wait for me and I understand

Things don't get better when Levine duets with the generic Julia Michaels on the Diplo-produced "Help Me Out." The track is meant to divorce itself from the sonic landscape Maroon 5 typically impose on their listening audience, but it just comes across as awkward and dated when Michaels' huskier and darker voice intones, "I need some uncomplicating." It is difficult to parse exactly what she means by this, or if she's referring to Gwyneth or what. The sexist undertones practically pulsate. Perhaps sensing that this collaboration with another white artist was a mistake, Red Pill Blues features a number of extremely brief guest shots with African-American artists, including SZA and A$AP Rocky.

On "Who I Am", Levine weirdly serenades Miami rapper LunchMoney Lewis, who sounds maybe four decades younger than Levine. Levine crowds Lewis out of the track, which concerns itself with how he enjoys being dominated by women until it goes too far. It's hard to understand where this thematic work really fits within Levine's experience, but since the song barely lasts three minutes, it's sort of suggested no one involved with this garbage knows either. As on tracks like the lazy jam "Visions" or "Whiskey", where Levine sounds like he is an entire Earth away from Rocky, the sparser instrumentation pretty much buries any chance backing vocals or instrumentation had to accentuate or otherwise improve the mediocre songwriting.

Also, perhaps I am simply naive, but how can something simply be like "whiskey"? That is not so much a metaphor as a word. (The song seems disturbingly engineered to be used in a liquor advertisement.) It is best to avoid such subtle incriminations in any artistic endeavor. In order to deflect from this pandering type of self-incrimination, Levine retreats to his most developed emotion — his anger at women from his past who contact him now that he is married to South African model Behati Prinsloo.

On "Closure", he completely abdicates responsibility for his past actions. "How did we end up in this situation?" Levine groans, "Guess it went exactly as you planned: I always give in to your manipulation." While such indictments of exes seem to us, in this time, as excessively condescending, we may be underestimating how deeply women fall in love with Adam Levine. Sex with Adam Levine is like perching on the finest toilet imaginable, so much so that "Closure" drones on for a full twelve minutes with jazz soloing meant to make us forget the miserable lyrics. At some point, you just hope it comes out.

Red Pill Blues does have highlights, moments that make you wish Levine had written the entire album with the eminently consistent Pakistani-American songwriter Ammar Malik, his co-writer on the classic pop song "Payphone". "Wait" nearly reaches those heights, with Levine singing about somewhat darker themes vaguely outside of his own experience ("Wasn't trying to get wasted, I needed more than three or four to say this"). A ballad co-written with Charlie Puth and Julia Michaels, "Lips on You", is similarly catchy, but as nutritionally empty as a soft-drink. Someone has to show Levine what a metaphor is.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording.

In Which It's The Kind Of Place Where They Dim The Lights

Bikini Wax Diaries

by LAUREN BANS

Waxists have flitted in and out of my life like boys or gynos or anyone else who ends up causing me high levels of anxiety at times when I'm not wearing pants. I laid down for my first bikini wax in high school, after I had finally snagged myself a boyfriend (an underweight nerd whose bedside table was lined with model Ferraris and worn Kohl's catalogues used for...), mostly because I figured if I was fat I should at least be really well groomed.

That way when he met up with his friends for D&D or whatever, and they were like, "Duuuude, what did she look like?" he would say, "Her bikini line is impeccable" rather than “Her midsection is Homer Simpson-esque, but not as tan." Note: I have since owned up to how fucked up these thoughts are (internalized patriarchy!), but that’s how I felt at the time.

Anyway, I don’t remember at all how much the first time hurt, but I think it was a lot, because I cried and the fact that I can't remember points to undiagnosed trauma. I recall that the very nice blond lady at the Aveda salon in Minnesota called in one of her nice blond lady coworkers to hold my hand and I don't think the second nice blond lady was even a waxist. She was like an actual hair dresser who happened to be on lunch break. After it was done, the original nice blond lady told me she shaped the top like a pretty little flower. So in the end, no harm, no foul, plus the lyrics to “Kiss From a Rose” as my senior quote in the yearbook.

In college, I ended up semi-regularly visiting a mean Bulgarian woman who spewed hateful rants about the beauty salon "fags" she worked with and their unnatural sexual unions as she spread my butt cheeks apart and coated the crack with a hot sticky substance. Hahahahaha. Seriously.

"Bad Boy", oil on linen, 66 inches x 96 inches by Eric Fischl

In recent years, as I have grown up to be an actual adult woman who buys interview outfits at Ann Taylor and can pass both a Forever 21 store and a bong without making contact with it, I have treated myself to more luxurious waxists, because science has proven the more you money you throw at the world the less pain the world will throw back at you. The last time I got waxed it was at a fancy spa in Park Slope, the kind of place where they dim the lights and romance your vaginal area with a warm lavender-scented towel before getting into the thick of it (pun intended). There was also a TV ON THE CEILING playing music videos on loop.

It’s actually really nice to focus fully on a Creed song rather than letting your brain go to its default setting, which is something like: "Fuck, she's doing it now. 1...2.. oh wait, she’s putting more wax on, OH MY GOD, she’s about to pull... IT’S HAPPENING MUTHA#@!#$%%%" On this particular occasion, the music video for Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved" came on just as my waxist was finishing up the last little vanity strips. She was already humming along, and as she stepped back to take a proud look at her final masterpiece, which looked like a mute newborn trying to scream, she poked her index finger into my thigh, and sang, in tune with the song, "YOU. YOU will be loved, now!" Then she laughed hard at her own joke.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find her website here, and she twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about the best TV dubs.

"Never Gonna Leave This Bed (acoustic)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)

"Makes Me Wonder (live lounge acoustic)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)

"Mine (Taylor Swift cover)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)