X-rated Bob wrote:
Hmmmm..... I don't think people get wiser as they get older, they just see more, and they see it come around again. This is at least the third serious global financial depression in my life time, I've seen bell bottoms come into and out of fashion at least twice, and when I listened to Mayer's latest album (and I have, twice, all the way through) I couldn't help but think it sounded rather a lot like Stephen Stills. I couldn't make up my mind if he was paying tribute to an influence (a whole album of that, without specific mention or a couple of covers?) or had been looking around for a new sound and dug into his dad's record collection. I kept on thinking the next track was going to be "Love The One You're With".
Mayer's latest album does indeed smell a lot like any old brand of acoustic Americana you'd care to name. Not surprising considering how much time he has been spending the last few years in the company of the USA's country music scene. Also, Mayer is now a reasonably established brand all by himself, so he can probably get away with doing a whole country-acoustic album and still retain much of his fan base, although he has been on record as saying he doesn't like people to compartmentalise his "sound", and wants to continually explore other directions.
Here I'm talking more about the stuff from his Continuum album however, which is the bluesiest of all his albums and is a better representation of how he tends to play live. You can hear a definite blues undercurrent throughout the album, but it avoids sounding like an outright copy of, say, an SRV album or a Clapton album or an Albert King album (but also is unmistakably a blend of those influences - and others - too). That's what I'd like to see from Dan: some kind of personal spin on the basic template he uses.
