To distinguish these bands, you have to go back a few years. Long before they landed their first arena gig, Ben Jovi sounded like an arena band: big, broad sentiments like “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name” pushed their 1986 breakthrough album, “Slippery When Wet,” to sales of more than 14 million worldwide. When grunge hit in the ’90s, Bon Jovi’s commercial fortunes dimmed somewhat, but they bounced back last year with a top-five single, “Always.” Ben Jovi is the Aerosmith of our day: its very perseverance is becoming its virtue. “These Days” takes a few chances with the formula: an electric sitar here, some strings there, an unusually dark romantic ballad called “Diamond Ring.” But as always, Ben Jovi excels at hits. “Something for the Pain” is so unabashedly hooky, so joyously resilient, it just begs to be on the radio so you can hear it in heavy rotation, once an hour.
Back while “Slippery When Wet” was selling by the zillions, Soul Asylum was the anti-Bon Jovi. Its 1986 album “Made to Be Broken,” released on the independent label Twin/Tone, was the epitome of mid-’80s indie rock: blunt, loud, screechy and punkish. It sold by the handful, not the truckload (8,551 copies that year, to be exact). But in 1992 Soul Asylum softened its sound, cleaned up Dave Pirner’s vocals and broke through with lush, melancholy singles like “Runaway Train” and “Black Gold.” The new album, “Let Your Dim Light Shine,” feels like a soggy retread. “Misery” and “To My Own Devices” are halfhearted rewrites of “Black Gold,” and the guitar work throughout is leaden. Soul Asylum may claim to be the choice of a new generation, but Ben Jovi, well, is always Ben Jovi. That’s a lot closer to the real thing.
