Music from The 3D Concert Experience
Artist: Jonas Brothers
(Hollywood)
 
It's a cinch to surmise who the primary market for this soundtrack to Jonas Brothers' recent docu-concert movie, it's the same kind of scream-prone girls somewhere between the onset of puberty and high school graduation whose upstretched arms on the flick's poster and this disc's cover insert evidence (unintentionally, it's hoped) the allegation in a recent South Park episode about how JoBros' purity rings underhandedly sell sex(uality) to the distaff legions in the siblings' prime demographic, per Disney machine orders. Here's trusting that's not, indeed, the intention of the House of Mouse nor the presumably virginal, chaste and godly Jonases. 

Lovers of the guys' music old enough to have sired -or birthed-them who found their last studio album, A Little Bit Longer, a legitimately rocking slab of power pop make up a minority of their fan base. I've no statistics to corroborate that assertion, but it seems another easily hazarded guess, yes?

What, then, does this artifact have for us, the more aesthetically discriminating, chronologically advanced Jonasophile? Apart from the ambiance of blossoming femininity going hoarse in appreciation of their unattainable crushes, that is? Enough for a purchase at a good price, I reckon.

Nothing from their first album makes the cut, but material on both of their subsequent longplayers does. Strangest of the latter's a remake of Shania Twain's "I'm Gonna Getcha Good"; the ditty affirms monogamy nicely enough, but the real estate metaphor for romance thwarts the song's catchiness with borderline icky idiocy.

"Live To Party" showcases the bros' affinity for classically poppy rocking ala' Dwight Twilley and Greg Kihn. But even if the tune's protagonist's only dancing with his galpal after the party breaks up, living to party (even in the doldrums of a teenager's summer vacation) isn't quite the message a Christ-affirming band in the general market ought to be promoting, is it? The less objectionable and roughly as infectious "Tonight" could be mistaken for a lost gem from a late '70s-early '80s skinny tie band, too, albeit with a whiff of ska about it.

These and other numbers from their last two studio sets (but not two of their biggest hits beyond Radio Disney, "When You Look Me In The Eyes" and "Lovebug") get a full band and orchestral strings behind them. Of those relative oldies, "Burnin' Up" inspires some audience sing-along. "Video Girl" and "BB Good" probably inspired the most (chaste) fantasizing among the same kings of gals whose arms are reaching toward the brothers on the cover.

Their lone studio track, "Love Is On its Way," not only proves the Jonases can make a lovey slow jam less treacly than "...Eyes," but write one worded just ambiguously enough to get them on Christian radio.

Oh, and they also accompany a couple of guests, girls identifiable with the majority of the crowd's gender profile. What might have otherwise been a fiesty run-through of a recent hit for pop-country thrush Taylor Swift, "Should've Said No" now resonates with the irony of her being an ex-girlfriend of one of the Jonii. Demi Lovato has a less controversial connection to the lads, having appeared with them in the Disney Channel's "Camp Rock," and her take on "This Is Me" reasserts her as an unpretentious cutie who appears to not yet have succumbed to the entitlements of diva-hood. 

The quality of their recent music and willingness to be mentored by old pros such as Elvis Costello and collaborate with forward thinkers like Kanye West, evidence of the Jonases artistic seriousness. When the estrogen-fueled buzz about them subsides, as it indubitably will, here's hoping this set and its attendant movie are recalled as a necessarily a exploitative detour on their path to greater heights.
 
Jamie Lee Rake