Jonas Brothers – Greetings from Your Hometown Review

Should the Jonas Brothers find themselves in the real world and not where every hometown has a MetLife stadium and a Hilton, they may regret Greetings from Your Hometown. What is implied as a visit to the listener’s place of birth is sure to be a rapid spiral, trudging through a mining town where the big draw is a cathedral where a bit of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was filmed. Try and enter Durham Cathedral without that little titbit popping up. Agony. Greetings from Your Hometown is a reminder of your roots, and for those embarrassed by them, who have formed the grooves in their brain needed to think outside of the county lines, then it will feel like a slow death from nostalgia’s infection. But those who are stuck in their hometowns, because they have not thought of life beyond their limit, are the target audience for Greetings from Your Hometown. 

Placid pop workings should be no surprise. Those who are into this will be satisfied because they’re infatuated with the people, not the personality they display across these light tracks. There’s an appeal to be told life is not as thrilling without you, and the Jonas Brothers through a few fastballs into this echo chamber, clanging around as it does on opener I Can’t Lose. But even the Jonas Brothers’ feeble sincerity comes crashing down with the “da-da-da,” moments, the terrible production which sounds like radio static piped into a shopping centre where all you can buy are visions of your dreams. Pop musicians have a responsibility not to reflect an idealistic world, conjured up in their gold-plated studio. Their walk of life is different to the suffering listener, and that distance must be noted. Greetings from Your Hometown is neither escapism nor commentary, so what purpose shall it serve culture or listeners? Not every artist can say anything of long-lasting worth. But the Jonas Brothers, at this point, are not saying anything at all.  

Sloppy pop noise from the last decade is what they still offer. A lift of Stayin’ Alive with No Time to Talk is a disturbing scrub of history. A whole generation that will believe the Jonas Brothers are behind the song to use during CPR. This pop erosion is disturbing because it implies the trio are improving or adding to the original. They are not. All it does is draw people away from a stronger original, a song which had purpose at the core. It’s the worst song you’ll hear all year. A songwriter whose heart is sliding out of their pen would fit all these emotions into one song, not a whole album. It’s a simplicity which has never left the Jonas Brothers, a choice to divide the emotional range not to build a story, but to draw the album out. You get more streams from fourteen barely plausible songs than you do from one solid piece. That’s just maths in motion.  

Even if there were an emotive through line worth experiencing, the flat instrumentals are agonising. An occasional desire to feel something other than poptimism is not served here. Inevitable acoustics, soft-spoken reassurances, the usual slop. Greetings from Your Hometown blurs together, a blob of insincere emotions and living with your head in the clouds to escape the problems which you can, by tackling, draw influence and experience from. Why Heat of the Moment is lifting guitar riffs which sound like The Edge is in the studio across from the Jonas Brothers is beyond any comprehension. A trio whose fear of standing out keeps them contained in the pop noise box. What a shame. Greetings from Your Hometown has the occasional moment of interest, but not a second of it worth hearing, because the brothers are afraid of what they could do if they pursued such sounds.