About two or three years ago, I was looking through my CD collection. While browsing through, I came to a rather uncomfortable conclusion — my collection is old. Not the actual discs, but the artists on them. I noticed that few artists below the age of fifty were to be found in my stack of albums. If I was that age myself, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but I’m not. Yes of course, age doesn’t matter when it comes to the quality of music, and yes, music was indeed a bit better 25-30 years ago. But still, it’s nice with new and fresh music. A few weeks later I stumbled across a singer\/songwriter who at that time was still unknown in Sweden. His name was John Mayer, and his album was Room For Squares<\/i>. I bought the CD. I saw him in concert. I bought a t-shirt.<\/p>\n
That’s history now, and John has grown to be a well-known name in the music world. He won a Grammy, did all the late night shows and did just about all the things a newborn star is supposed to do. To that list of things you can add a live DVD-and-CD release. But as much as we love hearing old songs, we wanted new music from Mayer. It took him awhile, but now it’s finally here; John Mayer’s Heavier Things<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The title implies that this release is a bit heavier than his previous album. However, that’s not the case nor do I think it was intended to be the case. Actually it sounds pretty much, production- and song-wise, like the Room For Squares<\/i> album, and to call that album or the new album “heavy” would be like calling Pavarotti groovy. John’s music isn’t heavy, but it’s pretty good.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to turn this review into a comparison between his new and old work, but considering the fact that Room For Squares<\/i> was such a great album, it’s hard not to compare.<\/p>\n
So let’s compare. Room For Squares<\/i> had great songwriting, a great production and great musicians. Almost the same thing can be said about Heavier Things<\/i>. As a matter of fact, the musicians on the new album are even better than the ones who played on Room For Squares<\/i>. Higher budget, I guess. On this release you can hear Jerry Hey (Seawind Horns, Earth Wind & Fire, Al Jarreau), jazz great Roy Hargrove, legendary percussionist Lenny Castro and many others.<\/p>\n
The production is still good, although a bit overdone. John doesn’t need to be buried in a huge production, because there isn’t anything to hide. John’s music would be given more justice if they kept it a bit more basic, a bit more laidback. The producer is Jack Joseph Puig, who also mixed many of the tracks on Room For Squares<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Now to the song material. The lyrics are thought-provoking, funny, at times sarcastic and always clever. Mayer is a truly gifted lyricist. Some of the songs are not as accessible, or may I call it “catchy,” as the ones on Room For Squares<\/i>, but change is good, I suppose. The highlights are “Only Heart” (it has “radio hit” written all over it), “New Deep” (great lyrics and a cool beat), and the opening track “Clarity.” The latter sounds like an MTV version of singer\/songwriter Michael Franks (check out his albums, they’re good).<\/p>\n
The artwork\/liner-notes are a big plus. The outside is very plain and simple looking and it gives you a rather stylish impression. The inside is filled with funny diagrams, such as where the songs were originally written geographically, in which keys the songs are, etc etc.<\/p>\n
Conclusion: John has almost done it again. Heavier Things<\/i> is a good release, though not as good as his debut album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":26543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6814],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-37783","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-john-mayer","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37783"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}