John Mayer

The Search For Everything

Musical anaesthetic for a restless soul succeeds in deadening feeling “The prettiest girl in the room, she wants me – I know, because she told me so…” complains John Mayer on the opening track of his seventh album, The Search For Everything. His difficulty with this apparently problem-free scenario is that he hasn’t gotten over his last girlfriend, the song explains. Expect he gets that a lot. As Neil Young once sang,“All my problems are meaningless/That don’t make them go away”. And this is really the central theme of Mayer’s album – ennui is a bitch and even talented, rich and handsome guys get the blues, y’know. Guitar-wise, Mayer is eloquently economical rather than showy throughout – each concise but burnished phrase ringing out from the gorgeous mix like the chime of a bell. Likewise, the lyrics of tracks such Emoji Of A Wave are intelligent, deftly observed and steeped in tender melancholy. Despite this, upbeat grooves – solid, tight, radio-ready grooves – dominate an album that seems profoundly unsure if it’s having a good time or not. On the excellent In The Blood and Changing, which has a beautifully turned Gilmour-esque solo, however, he succeeds in piercing the gloss of his own bored perfectionism to expose a little unvarnished truth. [JD] Standout track: In The Blood For fans of: Prince, Bruno Mars, Joey Landreth