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Label: Brushfire Records
Sound/Style: Searching but affirming pop-rock
By Steve Morley
If you caught the 2006 animated feature Curious George, then you’ve been introduced to Jack Johnson, whose easygoing music was an inspired choice for the low-key antics of an inquisitive primate. Johnson is himself a curious creature, with a breezy brand of acoustic pop-rock that’s thoughtful but not ponderous, and charming without being precious. His latest long-player, Sleep Through the Static, retains these likeable qualities but offers evidence that he’s tuning into a slightly different frequency, featuring longer songs, more varied instrumentation and deeper lyrical substance.
Johnson’s environmental bent—which prompted the choice to produce the album entirely with solar energy—appears on “All at Once,” the first of two sober opening tracks. The song is about global warming, though the singer follows an angular train of thought, reviewing differing responses to the potential crisis and looking for the closest thing to a silver lining in lines like “as the darkness gets deeper, we’re sinking so we reach for love.” Though he might also be suggesting a move toward embracing the love of God, the attachment to family is the primary affection Johnson presents in numerous songs about his wife and kids, the connection that provides shelter from an often overwhelming world.
He’s at his most outspoken on the title tune, which is about war, the spin that the media can apply to it, and the choice we can make to be complacent. Though he makes his own view clear, Johnson neither pontificates nor purports to have the answers to questions about the pain and complexity of the world, which he tenderly tries to explain to his young children in “Monsoon.”
Johnson’s fanciful and fluid lyrics run like raindrops down a windowpane, fusing phrases in playful and unpredictable ways that sometimes confound his meaning. Another similar device comes in the gentle and upbeat rhythms that betray the spirit of the musician’s Hawaiian homeland and provide a comforting mood regardless of subject matter. “Hope” is one such track, featuring a buoyant reggae bounce while examining the shadowy side of our natures. Though comparatively mild-mannered, “They Do They Don’t” is a foray into bluesy electric rock that displays the clear influence of Jimi Hendrix, minus the heavy sonics and oversized rock star charisma. In it, Johnson’s message resembles that of the Apostle Paul, declaring humankind’s lack of dependability and pointedly asking, “Why’d you trust us/ We are such villains.” His allusion to the garden scene in Genesis makes it clear the song comes from a spiritual angle.
Johnson’s writing can be oblique, but he puts his big heart across, even after announcing that “sometimes a heart is no place to be singing from at all.” Indeed, it’s the ingredient that makes Sleep Through the Static hopeful without sacrificing the vigilance needed to stay awake.
Audio Clips
"All At Once"
"Sleep Through The Static"
"Hope"
"Angel"
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