JOHN
MAYER Any Given Thursday
(Aware/Columbia) Rating: NN Rating: NN
John Mayer’s popularity used to confuse me. What are all these sweet young things doing swooning over a soporific adult-contemporary-esque crooner dude? Well, someone had to step up to the plate and fill Dave Matthews’s worn-out moccasins. Mayer’s cute, and as smoothly insipid as Matthews. He’s got the pained yet ostensibly sexy blasé delivery, the slick jazz-lite guitar riffs and the sucky lyrics down pat. This double live album is a testament to his whitey-soul heartthrob persona. Recorded over a bunch of shows in Birmingham, Alabama, you can hear squealing girls filling in every moment of empty space. It might be worthwhile for fans who wanna pretend they were there, but John Alagia’s poor production makes it hard to hear the instruments above the yowls.
