Jonas Brothers
Artist:Jonas Brothers
Label:Hollywood Records
Length:14 tracks/

Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas's celebrity could be easily summarized by calling them a male counterpart to Aly & A.J.--three photogenic, teenaged vocally Christian siblings given a humongous leg up in their musical and acting careers by their affiliation with Disney's kids entertainment machine.

It gets trickier from there. The Jonases started out on contemporary Christian label INO Records before jumping to Disney's Hollywood imprint. One of the guys even released a solo album on INO before his brothers joined him in song. 

Furthermore, Jonas Brothers sounds like prime evidence to make the case for the difference in  perspectives allowed to boy acts versus girl acts in the general market, family-friendly pop/rock high stakes race for the broadest swath of appeal. Judging from first-week sales, the Jonases cut a little broader swath than the above-named Milchaka sisters, with the former coming in at #5 on Billboard's overall sales chart, whereas Aly & A..J. debuted at #15. But time will tell, eh? 

Back to those differences. Jonas Brothers relies on a wholly different sense of stylistic hybridization than their blonde sisters in the Lord on the same label. For the Jonases, there's a surfeit of pop-punk, but in spritely manner that gives them continued acceptance at Radio Disney. Contrast that with Aly & A.J.'s more wildly eclectic approach on Insomniatic.

Fortunately, the brothers do make a rather varied go of what they're given. "Goodnight and Goodbye" gives a non-misogynistic take on the nearly prog arrangement conceits of emo meisters such as Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. That isn't to say that the missy they're addressing doesn't get a "damn" in the lyrics sung to her by whichever Jonas is singing lead for the romantic trouble she puts him through. Elsewhere, they tackle reggae-rock akin to Zenyatta Mondatta-era Police, and funky enough dance-rock. Neither are they slouches on power-poppy neo-new wave. A remake of Kim Wilde's "Kids In America," retitled and recontextualized into "Kids Of The Future" for inclusion in CGI cartoon movie Meet The Robinsons, lacks the peculiar mix of pride, ennui and yearning in the original, but "Inseparable" and "Just Friends" rock like lost Raspberries or Records b-sides. Yay to you for that, Jonases. 

But because they just happen to be the wrong gender, it doesn't seem they can get away with the complexities of romantic bravado and putdown that the Milchaka gals successfully chart in their latest longplayer. A Jonas bro' may let a girl go, but it's going to be done gentler than the brashness with which Aly or A.J. can do it.  Both acts share the same female 'tween audience, after all, and the brothers aren't going to come off as such jerks that it will affect their bottom line.

And with the dearly ridiculous, slyly self-referential "Year 3000" (their Radio Disney breakout hit) reprised from their last INO release, they can afford the artistic cachet to kowtow to their base with the occasional sappy power ballad such as "When You Look Me In The Eyes." Within the emotional and sonic pallet they're given here, the Jonases hit on more cylinders than not but bode for an even better album next time out. 

Jamie Lee Rake 8/31/2007