Album Review: John Mayer – Battle Studies

John Mayer has morphed multiple times in the last few years, since his 2001 debut album Room For Squares. The first phase would be the light-hearted young man playing fun pop songs that almost begged to ask at what point the boy became old enough to understand he wasn’t a boy anymore. Then Heavier Things offered a time of self doubt and heart ache. Promotional photographs taken in magazines at the time of the album’s debut had him sitting in a tub filled with water, various electrical devices floating in there with him. The message there is pretty obvious, and John’s songs did not seem to dispute it.

Soon after Mayer showed what his time in Berklee (along with his dedicated love to the heroes of guitar) had done for him and transitioned into the John Mayer Trio (JM3), he put out the album Try!, a strong blues album filled with odes to Vaughn, Clapton, Johnson, and others.

His third LP in 2006 Continuum was drastically different from his others. It broke the reigns of the usual and traditional John Mayer album and incorporated more of his bluesy influences than ever before.

“I’m obsessed with time lately, constantly crunching the numbers to get some sense of where I stand in the continuum.” – Mayer on Continuum to Esquire Magazine

To say Battle Studies is not a next step up for John is a not entirely accurate, but it certainly is not false. John sets new standards with the sound of this album, but the same light as Continuum, it does not seem like it will be as much of a personal triumph. Lyrically; however, the album stands out from all his other work like a Trekkie at a Star Wars convention. This is to say, though it is the same on the surface, there is something entirely unique about each song.

Each song has a serious undertone of a broken-hearted man. There is a loss of love and a hope of being someone different, again. As always, John writes a log of songs that question who he is as a person, and the track “Perfectly Lonely”, a crunchier guitar sound than the others, certainly pushes that point, especially the lyric: “Nothing to do, nowhere to be, a simple little kind of free. Nothing to do, no one but me, and that’s all that I need.” Who says, though, a well written song, is an appropriate first single. The album does convey a sense of paced, appropriate, unrest in the mind of the songwriter.

This fourth album is both relatable and fun, but not in the sense that it can be on the shelf of cd’s you pop into your car any day just because. Battle Studies is damp with “mood” and “emotion” and though the sound is there and pleasant, after the sparkle of his new album has faded, this will go down as John’s rawest album.

This marks Mayer’s first album to be recorded at home, and any album that is recorded at home becomes drastically more personal to the musician as well as open to more experimentation with the space and sound. Mayer was able to really experiment with the sounds of his playing and you can hear him really come into his own. Even with his cover of Cream’s “Crossroads”, it really sits in a unique place that could only be Mayer’s.

The most surprising song on the album is a Bruce Springsteen cover “I’m On Fire”, which has a hollow, haunting sound, one John Mayer has never really been able to capture. It certainly belongs on the album, but to hear Mayer covering one of Springsteen’s most unrecognized songs off of Born in the U.S.A. means something important, especially when you hold it to the line-up of the rest of the album. Again, this album is raw and emotional, and nothing says raw or emotional like 1980’s Boss.

In conclusion, Battle Studies is a good album and certainly a footprint in the sand within terms of John Mayer’s career. It breathes the way all his other albums have before it. The new album is certainly a marker, just do not expect the numbers of iTunes downloads to really dictate its impact.

Guest Author Bio: Ty Duggan is an avid reader and a film enthusiast. Born in Rhode Island, Ty enjoys playing drums, listening to music and having detailed conversations on politics, faith and relevance of film in our modern culture.