I could talk about my undying love for Jack White III A.K.A. John Anthony Gillis for a month's worth of blog space, so I'm going to limit this particular post to be about John Mayer and why I find him intriguing, and reserve a later date for my bromance confession to Jack White of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and most recently The Dead Weather.
John Mayer. What is his genre?
Soft Rock? Pop? Possibly.
You could certainly argue for that on
Room For Squares, or even
Heavier Things for that matter. More recently, however, he has taken a step back to his roots and gotten into my favorite genre...
The Blues.
His most recent album Continuum and his foray with The John Mayer Trio have left me absolutely speechless (not to mention his recent acquisition of an absolutely awesome arm sleeve tattoo).
His new music is (almost) everything I want. It's bluesy, it has masterful guitar work (click on the title of this blog for an example), it has a great vocal accompaniment to the music that isn't just to make girls scream anymore (although it still seems to do that as well).
Try! is an album that I have recently acquired and I can't seem to stop listening to it. I don't know if I'm just behind the times on the John Mayer hype but this is what I've come to notice: He did it the right way. He made his money early in his career with slow, soft songs that touch the hearts of everyone and can jump to the top of the charts (ex:
Your Body is a Wonderland). And now he's free to just do whatever he wants because he's got more money than he needs. Perfect evidence of this is
his Twitter page. He just messes around all day and says some quite weird things.
"Any time I feel like smoking pot I just book myself a life insurance exam."
- John Mayer via the Web
Then he discussed consolidating all of his computers onto one single computer, spoken with the vigor of a tech junkie. So, on top of this incredibly bluesy and popular and well-thought-out music coming from the Juliard product (and dare I say "nerd"), he is also a human being that is easy to relate to. Not something you get out of someone as talented as he is very often (yes, I'm looking in your general direction Kanye West).
So, to the album review:
Try! Released in 2005 by John Mayer, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino as The John Mayer Trio is described as "power-rockin', electric-guitar, in-your-face blues" by Mayer himself.
My personal favorite track on the album is
Who Did You Think I Was? as it starts strong and stays that way throughout the entire song with impressive and powerful lyrics such as "got a brand new blues that I can't explain". The guitar riff is also equally impressive and powerful with a display of Mayer's bluesy talents coming after the first verse (and throughout).
From top-to-bottom I cannot find a single track on
Try! that I don't like and that I'm not totally interested by. Just as John always keeps me interested with his constantly updated website and YouTube and Twitter pages. I highly, HIGHLY recommend this album if you haven't already discovered it. If you did, I'm upset that you didn't fill me in sooner.
The good news is that "Good love is on the way."
I'm Half the Boy, But I'm Twice the Man
Peace, Love and Rock
