The Daily Spin, September 10
John Mayer | Continuum
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Continuum (2006)
Artist: John Mayer
Link:
Mayer fully establishes just how proficient he is at both sides of the plate here, an odyssey in both songwriting and instrumentalization that strikes at the core of what makes his work so outstanding, on this album in particular.
Over the bluesy guitar-driven rock, Mayer croons about crumbling love and generational woes with all the aplomb of a budding star, someone who knows he’s got the sauce and is unafraid to run with that knowledge. His ability to swing from almost-drowsy desperation and misery with ‘Dreaming with a Broken Heart’ and ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’ to the bouncy jangle of ‘Waiting On the World to Change’ shines throughout the record, intermediate ventures throughout that showcase Mayer’s unreal versatility.
Heartbreak comes in so many flavors, and Mayer’s come equipped with an entire tasting menu, destructive in the self and the third-person, all of the feelings anyone who’s lost love knows all too well, and with brutal efficiency he’ll place that central to each song, slightly differently displayed, and break it apart for the listener, a dozen flavors of feeling - like the world’s most emotionally destructive Krispy Kreme box.
It’s beautiful. It’s harsh and sentimental, dark and light, thorns to a rose, and one of the finest blues rock albums ever made, if you ask me.
Rating: 9.4/10
Best Tracks: Belief; Dreaming with a Broken Heart; I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)
Worst Tracks: Bold as Love