John Mayer’s New Album Says Goodbye Boyband, Hello Blues

By: Dylan Sharek
Posted In: Entertainment

It’s official. John Mayer no longer sounds like a boy band with a guitar.

Oh sure, he’s still got the guitar, but for the sake of everyone who was forced to listen to “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “No Such Thing” 13, 000 times a day for the past couple years, he’s dropped the candy coated pop that made him famous.

Mayer first showed signs of this transition with the release of last year’s bluesy John Mayer Trio album Try! which featured renowned session musicians Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan. Whether or not this more soulful change would be permanent was up in the air, but with the release of Continuum, it’s clear that Mayer is more B.B. King than Backstreet Boys.

The first single off the new disc, “Waiting On the World To Change,” is about as close to his vintage material as it gets. Still, the anti-war lyrics (“If we had the power to bring our neighbors home from war/They would have never missed a Christmas/No more ribbons on their door”) and the sophisticated song structure keep it interesting.

“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” is a machine. An odd sounding, synthesized guitar part, chugging drum beat, and falsetto chorus just makes your head bob.

The next track, “Belief,” is one of the highlights. The song is a carefully constructed jab at the Iraq war and is one of the two politically fueled songs on the disc. During the completely appropriate Eastern sounding outro, Mayer begs the question, “What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand/Belief can/What puts the folded flag inside his mother’s hand/Belief can.” As an added bonus, Ben Harper makes an appearance on slide guitar.

The next track, the slow jam, “Gravity,” is nothing special but Mayer’s crooning will certainly grab the attention of his many female followers.

Tracks five and seven, “The Heart Of Life” and “Stop This Train,” have similar feels and are essentially Mayer and the guitar. “Stop This Train,” the better of the two, chronicles Mayer’s struggle with growing older while “Heart of Life” contemplates a failed relationship.

Now things start getting really good.

“Vultures” is Barry White meets Sade meets the Bee Gees. 100 percent soul. 100 percent sexy. 100 percent cool. Enough said.

I should mention track eight, “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room,” because you’ll be hearing about it sometime very soon. Despite being about breaking up, there’s something about it that brings to mind Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” It’ll no doubt be coming soon to proms, mix tapes for girlfriends and school dances everywhere.

Track nine has Mayer tackling something few dare to: Jimi Hendrix. With the shredding new cover of “Bold As Love,” Mayer will no doubt gain a huge amount of respect points from guitarists and musicians alike.

Tracks 10 and 11, “Dreaming With a Broken Heart” and “In Repair,” while not the strongest songs on the disc, contain musical culminations towards their ends that make them worthwhile listens, a Coldplay specialty.

The closing, “I’ll Find Another You,” suitably has Mayer getting down to the basics and channeling his inner bluesman.

It’s a perfect close to a disc that has Mayer discovering a soul yet untapped in his previous works. Continuum has something for everyone. It keeps some of the pop-infectiousness of Mayer’s previous discs, but moves more towards the musical side of the spectrum. The standout tracks “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You),” “Belief,” “Vultures,” “Slow Dancing In a Burning Room” and “Bold As Love” make the CD worth every penny, or at least a listen. With the release of Continuum, Mayer’s got it all going for him. Now let’s just see if he can quit making strange faces on stage.