release date: Jun. 5, 2001
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,56]
producer: John Alagia
label: Aware / Columbia - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "No Such Thing" - 2. "Why Georgia" - 3. "My Stupid Mouth" - 4. "Your Body Is a Wonderland" - 5. "Neon" - 6. "City Love" - 9. "Love Song for No One" - 10. "Back to You" - 14. "St. Patrick's Day"
Full length studio album debut by John Mayer contains four previously released tracks from his debut ep Inside Wants Out (1999), although most of these have been altered considerably to fit the overall pop / rock sound on this.
Where Inside Wants Out had Mayer standing with one foot on slick pop soil and the other on traditional folk ground, this album is a homogeneously sounding pop / rock album through and through.
Now, I'm not saying this is my favourite Mayer album but what it does really well is presenting a whole. All songs here are produced as pop / rock tunes without any edges - it's rock music that could be played at any school or retirement home without stirring things up. And yeah, Sinatra and Charles would do just that too, but they have other qualities. Mayer, a young talented singer and songwriter with his feet planted in blues rock (Hendrix) and paid tribute to jazz on his previous release simply owes more than this to the world of music. And no, it's not bad! It's just so damn slick and each song sound as the previous. At some point you end up thinking "now isn't this, this or that song?" And after a few listens I concede that it's mighty fine but... just too damn honey-drooling for my liking.
Regardless my liking it really contains many fine tracks. I just need to be in the right mood.
[ allmusic.com, Rolling Stone and Slant 4 / 5, Blender 3 / 5 stars ]
