Rating System
WWWWW- You can't go wrong with this
WWWW- Excellent and worthy of attention
WWW- May not change the world, but it's still good
WW- I'm not so sure about this...
W- Well, at least it makes a good Frisbee
John Mayer- Heavier Things (WWW)
Song Of The Album: "Split Screen Sadness"
Alternate Title: "Easy- A Little Too Easy"
Genre: Alt/Country/Pop
"Heavier Things" is a bit of a misnomer for John Mayer's second major-label album: it's actually a collection of easy-going, light breezy alt/pop tunes and isn't really that heavy at all. It's essentially a "nice" album, one that's not really remarkable at all but at least carries some substance to make satisfactory, though I really wonder if Atlantean Mayer will ever bank on all this potential he seems to possess.
You see, on "Heavier Things", there's really only two bright spots that stick out amongst the mass of easy-going alt/pop tunes: "Split Screen Sadness" and "Only Heart". The former, the album's best track, is the seventh track on the album and it feels like the track where Mayer kicks it into gear, putting in some strings and an R&B-pop-like bass beat that injects some life into the album. The same goes with "Only Heart", which doesn't have the bells and whistles of the former but has a vibrancy all its own, being a pounding country-esque tune that gives the album a bit of an edge.
The rest of the album? It's uh...kind of plain. Songs like "Daughter" and "Home Life" are rather unassuming and a little too easy to take, while "Come Back To Bed", no matter how you spin it (even with the steel guitar solo, the only real one here), still comes out as the album's most boring track. Then there's Mayer's falsetto, present on the first two tracks "Clarity" and "Bigger Than My Body", which gets rather annoying, and "New Deep", which has a chorus that's way too short. They have some substance so it's not like it's not interesting at all, but these songs could have done a lot more.
Overall, "Heavier Things" isn't a bad album...it's just not really that great. Perhaps the only positive is that it makes up for 2002's heavily overrated "Room For Squares" and again shows Mayer has potential to be a landmark songwriter in the future, but the question is this: at 25 years old and with two albums already in hand, how long will Mayer take to realize it?
-DG