Continuum

John Mayer is a guy who can write serious, deep songs and spontaneously cheerful ones in his sleep. On Continuum, which lifts him higher than ever, he turns his attention to the frantic rush of modern life, with days getting shorter and shorter. Stop the train is one of those songs, and when a guy in his thirties writes it, he’s probably onto something about how we’re all living at breakneck speed. Performance-wise, Continuum is built on the same trio that recorded the live album Try, with a few guests lending a hand. Among them are trumpeter Roy Hargrove and guitarist Ben Harper. The music on it is gorgeous, and Mayer comes across as a superb guitarist, though some will say he borrowed a lot from Eric Clapton and maybe even more from Jimi Hendrix, whose Bold as love you can find on Continuum. Maybe a bit too much, though, is owed to the late blues master Stevie Ray Vaughan: Mayer tries to get close to him in guitar technique, and nature even gave him a similar set of vocal cords. Mayer’s shift toward bluesier waters goes all the way back to 2003, when he started guesting on records by legends like Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Herbie Hancock. Clearly he’s really into the blues and, to a degree, jazz, since he loves diving headfirst into both. Some of the ballads are gorgeous, like Dreaming with a broken heart. Mayer gave Continuum that title partly because he discovered true love at his shows – the blues. That’s why he included Daughters and Something’s missing from the album Heavier things, to show which direction he’s heading in. As a bonus, Continuum also gives us Vultures and Gravity from the album Try: The John Mayer trio – Live in concert. That easily keeps the old listeners on board. Mayer and drummer Steve Jordan took care of the sound, wrapping the music in a pleasant sonic fabric where everything is right in its place. Mayer knows you’ve got to learn from people who’ve left some real achievements behind them. Others could take a cue from him too. No need to blindly follow patterns and guidelines; just take the best of what came before and add your own ideas. That’s usually a winning combination, and Mayer knows it very well. That puts him among the most representative musicians of his generation. In his lyrics, Mayer roams from socio-political to romantic – love themes, always hinting at the individual but really talking about everyone.