Review
Let’s hear it for those artists we can’t quite remember, who wrote the songs we’ll never forget. It’s still unclear whether John Mayer will turn out to be one of those shadowy balladeers, whose names (Stephen Bishop! Andrew Gold! Marc Cohn!) melt away while their tunes continue to fill our irritated memory banks. But pop’s cutie of the moment pays these forebears fine tribute on Heavier Things.
After his Grammy-winning, hit-spawning Room for Squares, Mayer, 25, might have panicked with an overly serious effort, as the title seems to hint. Instead, he’s easing into a musical landscape that’s ever more timeless and open, where the grooves melt from Europoppy to El Lay decadent to midtown-Manhattan classy. Mayer may be the teddy-bear voice of today’s coeds, but his sound could have bubbled up in any setting since the 1970s. Call it classic, but don’t call it rock.
The easiest label to throw on Mayer right now is “the male Norah Jones,” a comparison he plays up on Heavier Things by enlisting name virtuosos such as Roots drummer ?uestlove, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pedal-steel genius Greg Leisz. Most of the players brought in by returning producer Jack Joseph Puig (the Verve Pipe, the Black Crowes) are session greats accustomed to guys like Mayer, who can wrap their supple vocal chords around a melody until listeners feel like they’ve made it up, and whose sense of rhythm is so easeful that their songs suit anything — dining, having sex, pondering infinity.
Like Jones, Mayer never lets his personality talk over his elegant melodies, but unlike her, he has range. He cops a perfect Chris Martin falsetto on “Bigger Than My Body,” the record’s first single, written in tribute to Coldplay. He gets discreetly bluesy on “Come Back to Bed” and, with “New Deep,” creates the great second single ’90s one-hit wonder Duncan Sheik never had. “Only Heart” even features Mayer cutting loose on twangy Texas-style guitar — a big change from his cozy old acoustic — though that’s as crazy as anything gets here.
Crazy just doesn’t fit with Mayer’s persona, which is one that might save him from future obscurity. The problem with pop artisans like Mayer is that their elevated skills preclude the need for rock & roll bravado — but bravado is why people, and not just their songs, go down in history. To overcome this conundrum, Mayer’s doing what a few slick crooners, such as James Taylor and Lionel Richie, have done before: He’s turning up the impact of smooth.
The personality Mayer projects is one guys generally hate and women love, until they grow suspicious. It’s not exactly sensitive, though it gets labeled as such. Sensitive guys (see the aforementioned Sheik) are actually quite bothered by love and other cosmic things. Mayer is unruffled — even when he goes existential, on the playful “Something’s Missing,” he sounds like he’s looking for his car keys.
What Mayer manages to be, at a disturbingly young age, is suave. Effortlessness defines his bubbly guitar style and soothing vocals; his music moves like those adept hands he bragged about in his hit “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” He sometimes writes about being undone, but unlike, say, matchbox twenty’s Rob Thomas, he never actually risks a stumble. In “Split Screen Sadness,” the big heartbreak song on Heavier Things, he mourns romantic separation: “I’ll check the weather wherever you are/’Cause I wanna know if you can see the stars tonight.” Now, isn’t that just what you would want your ex — the one who’s inevitably going to win you back — to say?
In pop, as in life, suave can turn from attractive to creepy very quickly, and that problem is one Mayer is starting to face. Already, fans have been heard murmuring about how he’s too aware of his good looks and trouble-free talent. On Heavier Things, he sometimes fools himself into thinking he’s wise rather than just smart, and ends up condescending. Perhaps some of his new lady friends have told him otherwise, but in the modern world, men are not “the God and the weight” of their female companions’ world, as he intones in the preachy “Daughters.”
The arrogance that emerges here and there on this album makes Mayer’s laid-back charm less attractive. But such a flaw could eventually make him more interesting — and save him from being squashed into anonymity by his own songs.
HIS LIFE IN CDs
Inside Wants Out
Room for Squares
Any Given Thursday
After his Grammy-winning, hit-spawning Room for Squares, Mayer, 25, might have panicked with an overly serious effort, as the title seems to hint. Instead, he’s easing into a musical landscape that’s ever more timeless and open, where the grooves melt from Europoppy to El Lay decadent to midtown-Manhattan classy. Mayer may be the teddy-bear voice of today’s coeds, but his sound could have bubbled up in any setting since the 1970s. Call it classic, but don’t call it rock.
The easiest label to throw on Mayer right now is “the male Norah Jones,” a comparison he plays up on Heavier Things by enlisting name virtuosos such as Roots drummer ?uestlove, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pedal-steel genius Greg Leisz. Most of the players brought in by returning producer Jack Joseph Puig (the Verve Pipe, the Black Crowes) are session greats accustomed to guys like Mayer, who can wrap their supple vocal chords around a melody until listeners feel like they’ve made it up, and whose sense of rhythm is so easeful that their songs suit anything — dining, having sex, pondering infinity.
Like Jones, Mayer never lets his personality talk over his elegant melodies, but unlike her, he has range. He cops a perfect Chris Martin falsetto on “Bigger Than My Body,” the record’s first single, written in tribute to Coldplay. He gets discreetly bluesy on “Come Back to Bed” and, with “New Deep,” creates the great second single ’90s one-hit wonder Duncan Sheik never had. “Only Heart” even features Mayer cutting loose on twangy Texas-style guitar — a big change from his cozy old acoustic — though that’s as crazy as anything gets here.
Crazy just doesn’t fit with Mayer’s persona, which is one that might save him from future obscurity. The problem with pop artisans like Mayer is that their elevated skills preclude the need for rock & roll bravado — but bravado is why people, and not just their songs, go down in history. To overcome this conundrum, Mayer’s doing what a few slick crooners, such as James Taylor and Lionel Richie, have done before: He’s turning up the impact of smooth.
The personality Mayer projects is one guys generally hate and women love, until they grow suspicious. It’s not exactly sensitive, though it gets labeled as such. Sensitive guys (see the aforementioned Sheik) are actually quite bothered by love and other cosmic things. Mayer is unruffled — even when he goes existential, on the playful “Something’s Missing,” he sounds like he’s looking for his car keys.
What Mayer manages to be, at a disturbingly young age, is suave. Effortlessness defines his bubbly guitar style and soothing vocals; his music moves like those adept hands he bragged about in his hit “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” He sometimes writes about being undone, but unlike, say, matchbox twenty’s Rob Thomas, he never actually risks a stumble. In “Split Screen Sadness,” the big heartbreak song on Heavier Things, he mourns romantic separation: “I’ll check the weather wherever you are/’Cause I wanna know if you can see the stars tonight.” Now, isn’t that just what you would want your ex — the one who’s inevitably going to win you back — to say?
In pop, as in life, suave can turn from attractive to creepy very quickly, and that problem is one Mayer is starting to face. Already, fans have been heard murmuring about how he’s too aware of his good looks and trouble-free talent. On Heavier Things, he sometimes fools himself into thinking he’s wise rather than just smart, and ends up condescending. Perhaps some of his new lady friends have told him otherwise, but in the modern world, men are not “the God and the weight” of their female companions’ world, as he intones in the preachy “Daughters.”
The arrogance that emerges here and there on this album makes Mayer’s laid-back charm less attractive. But such a flaw could eventually make him more interesting — and save him from being squashed into anonymity by his own songs.
HIS LIFE IN CDs
Inside Wants Out
Room for Squares
Any Given Thursday
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