Live review: Maroon 5 (for The Music Network)

09 May 2011

by Poppy Reid

Friday May 6
Acer Arena, Sydney 

Maroon 5 are undoubtedly one of the biggest bands to come out of the U.S. With a string of hit singles and Grammy Awards honouring their three albums, it’s no wonder they’re now filling Australian arenas.

As the moniker hints, Maroon 5 are a five-piece act. However judging by the collective disappointment at the absence of side screens (that would have given the cheap seats a glimpse of fetching frontman Adam Levine), most were really just here for a perve.

Opening with Misery, the first single from their most recent album,Hands All Over, Levine destroyed my schoolgirl crush in one minute flat; he pranced from stage left to right and swivelled his lacking hips with what seemed like rehearsed Madonna-esque movements. Effeminate poise aside, Levine has an incredibly articulate and high reaching set of lungs that framed tracks like If I Never See Your Face Again, Harder To Breathe and Won’t Go Home Without You.

Maroon 5 showed their eclecticism in The Sun where they incorporated Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean before soaring into an impressive instrumental; bassist Michael Madden attempted a head bang with as much fervour as you can offer a Maroon 5 track.

“We've been around for a long time and it’s so incredible to see this support all the way from Australia. So from the bottom of our heart, our collective heart, thank you very much,” says Levine before new track,Never Gonna Leave This Bed.

“That one was G, this one is maybe PG 13 slash R,” he said. “It doesn't have any curse words, just sexual innuendo.”

Secret was a sonic treat, the band remixed the track acoustically withTina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It and Al Green’s Lets Stay Together.

“The most important question for tonight is where the ladies at?” this comment almost made up for the body roll he felt necessary to snakes around his mic stand in the previous track. “Some of the smartest men in Australia are here tonight.” The singer then rejected a fans request for his shirt and instead gave her a bracelet given to him by a fan in Jakarta. “Don’t lose that fucken’ bracelet,” he said.

She Will Be Loved proved the best sing-along for the night, Levine hit the highest note with dexterity on his knees, before creating a questionable medley with the crowd.

Closing with tracks, Stutter and This Love, Levine got back on his knees and played his cordless guitar to a low amp, a fiend to the feed back; a sea of hands waved back and forth behind him.

Encore tracks Hands All Over and Makes Me Wonder showed the band's progression to a more electro-pop sound but it was the intelligently placed final track, Sunday Morning that the arena appreciated most and sang all the way out the arena's doors.