John Mayer: Continuum Transcript

UMC.org Music Review

John Mayer: Continuum
Label: Columbia
Sound/Style: deft fusion of groove-oriented pop, rock and R&B

By Steve Morley

(UMC.org)—On John Mayer’s solo debut, he sang a now familiar line about wanting to run through the halls of his high school and scream at the top of his lungs. In the scant five years that have passed between that disc and his third and latest solo release, the 29-year-old musician has not only graduated from scrappy newcomer status, but is well on his way to an accelerated doctorate in popular music-making with an emphasis in thwarting—as well as exceeding—expectations. Mayer, an unusually astute and intelligent rock artist who moonlights as a writer for Esquire, has shrewdly outsmarted any attempts to straitjacket him into a predictable marketing plan. His last album, billed as The John Mayer Trio, was a deliberate departure into blues territory that proved Mayer is no mere pop commodity. On the aptly named Continuum, he eases back toward a stylistic center point, meshing his blues, rock and pop sub-personas into a well-rounded collection of personal and groove-heavy tunes.

It’d be hard to go wrong playing alongside drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Pino Palladino, the veteran musicians with whom Mayer cut the aforementioned trio project. Their anchoring rhythmic support is central to the record; yet Mayer, roughly two decades their junior, joins them as a full partner. On the threesome’s remake of the Jimi Hendrix classic “Bold As Love,” Mayer wields his electric guitar and sings it like he owns the copyright—no mean feat—and easily holds his own with his more seasoned bandmates. With Jordan in the co-production chair as well as the drum throne, Mayer’s dalliances into hip-hop-inflected rock are infused with fleshy rhythms that push past hip-hop’s typically techno-heavy beats, elevating the form to one with increased musicality and humanity on the soulfully percolating “Belief” and “Waiting on the World to Change.” The former track looks pointedly at belief systems as “a beautiful armor (that) makes for the heaviest sword,” while avoiding the specific topic of religious faith. He allows that “everyone believes in how they think it ought to be,” yet contends “we’re never gonna win the world, we're never gonna stop the war, we're never gonna beat this if belief is what we're fighting for.” The less outspoken “Waiting” addresses the imperfect world inherited by today’s twentysomethings, though Mayer’s matter-of-fact protests are made without the naïveté or hotheadedness of which youth is so frequently accused: “We see everything that’s going wrong with the world and those who lead it/ We just feel like we don’t have the means to rise above and beat it/ So we keep on waiting for the world to change.”

A recurring theme on the disc is the younger generation’s fear of inadequacy—as represented by Mayer, anyway—to rise to the task of adult responsibility. It shows up in emotional terms on “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and “Stop This Train,” in which he nakedly expresses his dread of losing his parents and the subsequent domino effect of facing unbuffered adulthood and the encroaching progression of time: “So scared of getting older/ I'm only good at being young/ So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun/ Stop this train, I wanna get off and go home again/ I can't take the speed it's moving in.” “Gravity,” a weighty blues-rock number that addresses the problem of sin without naming it as such, moves from age-based concerns to the carnal temptations that cross all boundary lines: “I'll never know what makes this man/ With all the love that his heart can stand/ Dream of ways to throw it all away/ Gravity is working against me/ And gravity wants to bring me down/ Oh, twice as much ain’t twice as good/ And can't sustain like one half could/ It's wanting more that's gonna send me to my knees.” The song’s final phrase might be about accountability, or a Higher Power, or both: “Just keep me where the light is.”

Mayer’s beyond-his-years insight and humility indicate that he’s finding a source of illumination somewhere, even if he doesn’t spend time discussing it on Continuum—an impressive musical progression from a young talent who likely has a long way left to travel.

Audio Clips

"Waiting on the World to Change"

"I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)"

"Belief"

"Gravity"