John Mayer - The Search for Everything

John Mayer
The Search for Everything
2017
Spotify

Whenever you listen to a John Mayer song there are a couple of things that go through your head. First it is just how pleasing his music is in vacuum. From the first note of this new record The Search for Everything mayer is throwing his music back to a simpler sound when everything seems to be getting more complex. He has a way of making something real and very sweet, but there is also this other side where each song feels incredibly contrived. "Emoji of a Wave" has neither the word Wave nor Emoji in it, so the title makes little sense except to appeal to a younger demographic who perhaps has forgotten or never knew about John Mayer. It is this pull of a raw emotional song and a very thought out image that either turns people off John Mayer in a big way or makes them love him. This record is the first where ti feels like John is trying to get back to his earliest days of love songs about women rather than some of his funkier experiments throughout the years, but it seems like grasping for something that doesn't really exist anymore. "Helpless" is a great example of a song that really says very very little lyrically but is so satisfying musically that you can't help but fall in love with it. It's never going to be as good as the first time, but for some reason you keep going back again and again in hopes that it might.

What is maybe the most frustrating about the record is the self reflection that it is billed as never really lands anywhere. Most of Mayer's conclusions are quite basic and don't let any real personality shine through. The roll out of the record over a few "phases" was also odd and clunky. "Love on the Weekend" might as well be the soundtrack for a fucking Cialis commercial, it is that level of generic. I mean you can just imagine the recording sessions, the high fives when they think they really nailed it with the country stomper "In the Blood" but it never connects at all in any real way. It is almost like Mayer is so talented that He can't quite get to a place where his song writing can be in line with his playing. His guitar solo on "Changing" really is nice, but the song itself is boring and monotonous that the 15 seconds of good is not better than the three minutes and fifteen seconds of garbage. This album is trying so hard to be so many things that it never really becomes anything but nice sounds in the background. Maybe he will put it all together one day, or maybe it doesn't even matter. This unfortunately is no where near his best work.  

5.5 out of 10