Mayer's latest effort is light but lovely

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003

One can only assume from the title John Mayer chose for his sophomore album, "Heavier Things," that the 25-year-old pop troubadour is delving into more challenging subject matter or has perhaps purchased a distortion pedal. Neither is the case. Both music and words on Mayer's follow-up to 2001's multiplatinum "Room for Squares," in stores today, skim relentlessly shiny surfaces like so many gleaming pebbles -- rounded and buffed and phenomenally pleasant to behold. Mayer's melodies shimmer. His rhythms are impossibly crisp.

But if there are depths to be plumbed beneath the smooth facade, Mayer hasn't yet found his way down. The collection opens with the surprisingly textured "Clarity," in which an ethereal piano line lashed to ear-poppingly percussive claps promises a fresh perspective. Trumpets fall in -- a stylish touch. A layer cake of jazzy guitar fills rises up, and drums snap into place. And then there's that dorm girl's dream of a boy's voice -- an ineffable mash of sex and sensitivity that causes otherwise well-adjusted females to clap on one and three. This is, after all, the artist who won a Grammy for a song that promises "I'll never let your head hit the pillow without my hand behind it."

And what does the whole affair add up to? Adult contemporary pop of the highest order -- all well and good -- but hardly the introspective, absorbing material influential singer-songwriters are made of. The funny thing is that Mayer seems to genuinely believe he's dealing in philosophy or, at the very least, some sort of contemplative spirituality. The first single, "Bigger Than My Body," is a swollen, lite-funk radio hit, catchy as all get-out, in which Mayer wonders: "Why is it not my time?/ What is there more to learn?/ Shed this skin I've been tripping in/ Never to quite return."

The answer to the second question is: good grammar. But more to the point, a closer look at the song's lyrics reveals that Mayer is actually pondering the deeper meaning of his own career. "Maybe I'll tangle in the power lines/ And it might be over in a second's time/ But I'll gladly go down in a flame/ If a flame's what it takes to remember my name," he declares in the song's bridge. Mayer would be well advised to consider what it will take for music lovers to remember his name.

A long, respectable career isn't out of his reach. Mayer has a real feel for classy pop; "Come Back to Bed" is an elegant blues tune anchored by a beautifully visceral revelation: "I won't sleep through this/ I survive on the breath you're finished with." "Daughters" is all sweetness, soft guitars, and shakers, a precious ditty cautioning parents that "Girls become lovers who turn into mothers," and producer Jack Joseph Puig (the Verve Pipe, Jellyfish, the Black Crowes) channels the warmth with impeccable taste. Couple it with "Home Life," however, and the album flirts with Hallmark-caliber sentimentality that will either seal Mayer's reputation as an industrial-strength nice guy or just make people want to look away.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.