Music Review: Continuum - John Mayer - Page 2

And it was as if the fates had planned it - Amazon had one of their special deals where not only were both Try!, Mayer's live blues disc (the one I preferred to get, to be honest) with jazz great (and current Who member) Pino Palladino on bass, and his latest, Continuum, which I wasn't so hot to pick up, on sale very cheap, but together they were cheaper than buying them separately anywhere else. I took the plunge. When they arrived a few days later I sheepishly took Try! out with me on a drive thinking that I'd surely realize I'd made a dumb mistake, but immediately I felt vindicated - Mayer killed me with his playing. He may just be a young guy who's never suffered a day in his life, but he can play the blues with the best of them. The Tragically Hip may have been right when they sang that "the blues are not required" - to play the blues these days. So maybe he's not completely original - he has certainly picked up a good deal of his sound, both vocally and in his guitar playing, from Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I was quick to find out that when he steps out of the blues and into more mainstream music, as on Continuum, it's merely an influence rather than an imitation.

It wasn't immediate - I didn't warm up to Continuum very quickly and therefore I didn't have very receptive ears for it. While it fared better than I expected, it just wasn't a hit with me. There's a glossy sheen to the sound that makes it hard for me to get a grip on much of what's going on. But the studio version of "Gravity" kept me coming back, along with the uplifting toe-tapper "The Heart Of Life" which had me grabbing the liner notes to see if Eric Clapton was guesting on guitar (he's not,) and then the plaintive "Stop This Train" became added to the "favorites" list.

Article Author: Tom Johnson

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