Hands All Over by Maroon 5

That Maroon 5 are a hugely popular, chart-topping "rock band" in the age of R&B is less a testament to their ability to transcend trends and eschew labels than it is to the fact that they aren’t really a rock band but, rather, an R&B band who disguise themselves as a rock band by occasionally releasing rock-influenced songs. However, Hands All Over, its third album, finds them believing the lie, with mixed results.

Lead single "Misery" and album opener "I Can’t Lie" are immaculate pop songs: genuinely, nay, shockingly, funky and infinitely appealing future classics. "Give a Little More" channels the impeccably polished, insatiably hummable and danceable disco funk of Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson to create one of the catchiest songs in the group’s repertoire: neither too gimmicky or self-conscious in its homage (think Jamiroquai), nor obnoxiously ultra-modern in its production style (J.T.)

It’s tracks like these, on which the band can be heard drifting towards the R&B end of their musical spectrum, that find every member excelling in his respective role, realizing his full potential as an artist. But alas, this serves to typify the inevitably hit-or-miss nature of a band that seems to love all genres of music equally: Adam Levine never shines more brightly than when he’s granted the opportunity to sing R&B, and never sounds more awkward when he tries to be Sting or Chris Martin.

Though they make a valiant and quite obviously concerted effort, "Stutter," "Don’t Know Nothing" and "Just a Feeling" can’t help but bore. In the case of the first two, it should be noted that this is a band that, try as it may, finds it exceedingly difficult to "rock," and is far more adept at dance music. So when the group starts banging on the reverberous tom-toms a little too much and revving up the big distorted guitars, its key demographic will begin to lose interest, and with good cause.

For Hands All Over, Maroon 5 has teamed up with "Mutt" Lange, a producer perhaps best known for the incredibly polished style of his collaborations with Def Leppard, Shania Twain and Bryan Adams. Although he’s worked in a number of genres, his lack of experience with R&B acts becomes especially apparent when Maroon 5 feels like being an R&B band: under his tutelage, the title track, an otherwise fairly straightforward funk rock song, becomes "arena-fied" and littered with dated-sounding synths. However songs like "Never Gonna Leave This Bed", "Runaway", "Out of Goodbyes" and "How" find the partnership yielding much fruit in the form of efficient, vaguely R&B-inflected (or, in the case of "Out of Goodbyes," country-inflected) soft rock.