JOHN MAYER TRIO
Try! John Mayer Trio Live in Concert
Sony
· Good to see you finally cutting loose, John. But next time, do you think you could cut a little more loose?
John Mayer can play guitar. In fact, he can really play guitar. However, people who only know him for "Your Body is a Wonderland" can’t be faulted for not knowing this.
Now, with the release of Try! John Mayer Trio Live in Concert, Mayer can finally show his prodigious guitar skills to the world. Eschewing the singer-songwriter persona of his last two records, Mayer tries his hand at blue-eyed blues, evoking Stevie Ray Vaughan in both his voice and guitar. The result is good, but falls short of those he’s trying to emulate.
The rhythm section of session veterans Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan, on bass and drums respectively, are ultra-professional. Actually, they’re a little too professional, only showing flashes of the off-the-rails drive that the rhythm sections of Mayer’s heroes had and that Mayer needs. Also, for the most part, Mayer’s guitar tone is squeaky clean, sounding like it should be on AM radio pop tunes rather than gritty blues rock. Having said that, his actual playing is very good, and Mayer really catches fire on the solos, which are both spontaneous sounding and well-structured.
Not surprisingly, the best songs are the covers, which include Jimi Hendrix’s "Wait until Tomorrow" and Ray Charles’s "I got a Woman." Flaws aside, Try! contains Mayer’s best recorded playing, and it’s clear that this is the music he’s most comfortable with. Next time I hope he really gets down and dirty, instead of just "less clean."
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