This album restored my faith in the music industry. (Well, almost. I mean, Brittney Spears just put out a greatest hits album…) Everything is pleasing about it, including the packaging. It has liner notes! Yeah! Remember those?
The entire album is live, which is a refreshing change of pace during a time when so much music seems to be overproduced. There are new versions of two songs from Heavier Things – Daughters and Something’s Missing. There are also two covers.
Track three is a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Wait Until Tomorrow, and track eight is a great rendition of Ray Charles’ I Got a Woman. (So great, in fact, that it just might make up for the complete bastardizion of the same song in Kanye West’s Gold Digger.)
The rest of the CD is filled with new Mayer material. Who Did You Think I Was, the first track, pretty much sums up the shift from pop to a blues-rock fusion that showcases his talent a lot better: “Am I the one who plays the quiet songs/Am I the one who turns the ladies on/Will I keep shining til my light is gone/Who did you think I was?”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from listening to John Mayer in interviews and his column in Esquire, it’s that he knows what he’s doing. (NPR has a great interview with him here.) Say what you want about the boy, but the fact is he can write, sing, and play guitar better than most people out there right now.