Heavier Things

 (639 customer reviews)

John Mayer is bound to stir up discussion, it seems, no matter what he does. Whether he sounds too close to Dave Matthews or whether (like here) he distances himself a bit from that sound. Whether he works on the guitar more (as in his debut) or whether he puts in more electronic elements distorting the original sound. In any case, controversy drags attention to him and it is one thing he deserves.His sound in this album is strengthened by a solid band (among others, to be found is Matt Chamberlain who's played drums for the likes of Tori Amos and Brad Meldhau) and though the lyrics might not be the deepest he's written, the album as a whole has a more original and mature feel than his debut album, which did happen to sound like a Dave Matthews ripoff more than once. Due to its variety of tempos and rhythms included in this work and the somewhat "heavier" electronic component (interestingly enough a little song tempo chart by sequence is included in the booklet!) it...Read more

...but that's how it goes with sophomore releases. You compare it to the freshman release(which in John's case, blew my mind. I loved it. Especially 3x5), and you're bound to be severely disappointed. It's definitely different from Room for Squares....but all in all, I like it. It took maybe....3 runs of the entire cd, but I ended up jumping the fence. But. One song on Heavier Things that stood out from the first listen(albeit sentimental)was....DAUGHTERS. This is my favorite song on the entire album. As I listened to it, my mouth fell open like it did when I heard the alternate take of Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know". It pulls you in, and makes you listen.....Very surprising. I think John is developing well as a musician. But adolescent agnst-ridden teeny boppers won't like it (yay!).....except for maybe Bigger than My Body and Only Heart (the latter makes me nauseated, lyrically). Overall, this album displays John's ability, potential, and his inherent verve. I don't...Read more

While I think this is a pretty good album in general, note that the DVD side of the disc is *not* DVD-Audio, but rather DVD-Video. In other words, the 5.1 mix is not the DVD-Audio 'advanced resolution' quality, but just as Dolby Digital compressed audio. While I'm sure some folks won't care about this, there are certainly audiophiles who will, and I would think those would pretty much be the only folks who would be interested in the DualDisc version of this album. Other DualDiscs have been released with DVD-Audio on the DVD side, and they don't do a good job of explaining what version is on the DVD side on the packaging.