2005′s Stand Up didn’t even reach my radar… to this day, I don’t think I’ve heard a single one of its tracks. For all I know it’s a hidden masterpiece, but I believe it was received rather coolly by critics and fans alike. And then the band did nothing for a few years, after which they suffered the death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore, a beloved band member and the key element musically in so many of their best songs.

2009′s Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, then, was positioned as a comeback, both from the artistic slump of their past few albums and from the loss of Moore. Reviews and fan reception suggested that this was their best work in nearly a decade. I was skeptical but willing to give them another try.

Five songs into my first listen, I wasn’t really buying it. The songs were ok but they didn’t strike me as the equal of the Dave Matthews Band songs I love from their first few albums.

Then ‘Dive In’ started and when I heard the opening lyrics — “I saw a man on the side of the road with a sign that read ‘Will work for food’” — I decided then and there that this album was an abject failure. An earnest song about the plight of the homeless? Sorry, you’ve lost me.

But the next line was “I tried to look busy ’til the light turned green,” which caught my attention. So did the song’s rich music and melody and the catchy chorus. It turned out to be a song about uncertainty and powerlessness and optimism in the face of all the evidence that the world is a cruel and ugly place. And somehow during the course of that song my opinion of the whole album changed and I found myself wanting it to be good, whereas I now realize I went into it kind of wanting, or at least expecting, it to be bad.

Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King isn’t as good as Lillywhite, Crash or Under the Table and Dreaming, but it’s the best thing the band has done other than those three great albums. And it has me rooting for them again. All thanks to this song.

The lead songwriter is Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and Taylor Hanson (the talented member of Hanson) handles lead vocals. The Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha and Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos round out the band but it’s the first two fellows I mentioned who had me excited. Both Fountains of Wayne and Hanson have a knack for power pop and this band promised to be power pop nirvana.

Well, the album is certainly power pop but it’s not quite nirvana. Schlesinger seems to have saved his best material for his day job… most of these songs would have trouble cracking the lineup on a Fountains of Wayne album.

My biggest complaint is with the album’s production. These days, I’m used to just about every CD I buy sounding great even when the music isn’t up to par. But Tinted Windows sounds way too light and tinny… it’s as if the bass levels were inadvertently zeroed out when they hit record.

‘Kind of a Girl’ was the album’s first single and the closest thing to a Fountains of Wayne song on it.

So I’m finally accepting that I’m never going to give these albums proper reviews but rather than ignore them entirely I’m going to pick a song from each to highlight the rest of this week as Songs of the Day.

First up is Keane’s Perfect Symmetry, the third album from the Scottish trio. The band’s first two efforts, Hopes and Fears and Under the Iron Sea, were stately, emotional affairs. Perfect Symmetry is something else entirely. It leans heavily on 80s-style pop, utilizing synths and high-gloss production.

It’s an odd direction for the band and I can’t say it’s one I welcomed. I feel like they’d managed to hit a pretty solid groove with the earnest tunes they cranked out from their piano/bass/drums lineup on the first two albums. That said, the songcraft remains intact on Perfect Symmetry and, as musical detours go, it’s largely successful. I’d rather this not be the band’s new normal, but as an experiment it works.

‘Better Than This’ is typical of the sound on Perfect Symmetry, complete with it’s hand claps and “oh whoa oh” backing vocals (which remind me of Glass Houses Billy Joel for some reason). I’ve read a lot of people comparing this song to David Bowie, but I don’t know Bowie well enough to pick that out.

At any rate, it sounds like the band had a lot of fun recording it, and I have a lot of fun listening to it.

Such was my bias against country music at the time that I didn’t even think about picking up the album. Compare that to, say, the praise heaped on Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, which prompted me to buy that album despite my general disinterest in rap music. (I didn’t like Wayne’s album much at all, incidentally, so maybe that was a lesson learned).

Oh, how I’ve grown (or regressed, if you listen to some of my family members). Country music is no longer off-limits… on the contrary, it’s what I’m listening to 75% of the time these days. Well, to be specific, I’m listening to Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert 75% of the time these days.

During a Paisley-inspired country music buying spree a month ago, I picked up Lambert’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, bypassing the newer release for the album that made her a critics’ darling. And that album lived up to its hype. It’s the rare record on which every single song can be legitimately called the album’s best. That album is so good it has me wondering if I should revisit my decade’s-best list to find room for it.

So now I’ve picked up Revolution, Lambert’s third album, and I’m in the same boat as those critics I read last summer… wondering if she can live up to the hype generated by her sophomore release. And the answer is a resounding yes.

I don’t know yet if Revolution is the equal of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, or even the superior album, because it’s still pretty new to me. But it’s a more ambitious record — it digs deeper and casts its net wider. My initial feeling is that the songs on Girlfriend are a little bit stronger, but the best moments on Revolution pack the same punch.

As on Girlfriend, the song selection is split about equally between songs Lambert wrote on her own, songs she wrote with others and covers by respected songwriters (John Prine is represented here, while tunes by Patty Griffin and Gillian Welch show up on Girlfriend). Lambert’s solo tracks are generally the best songs on her albums which makes me wonder why she chooses to team up with others. More enjoyable process, maybe?

What makes Lambert special is that she’s the full package, a multiple threat. Her songwriting chops are superb… she could easily make a career writing songs for other people. But she has a powerful voice (she place third on Nashville Star, the country music version of American Idol) and she knows how to use it — she’s just as effective on the soft notes as the belters, and she plays up her charming twang in all the right places. And as a performer, she switches between hell-raising country rock jams and the most delicate ballads with ease.

She reminds me of a young, more radio-friendly Lucinda Williams, and if you know me, you know that comparison is about as high a compliment as I can pay. Twenty years from now, I can see Lambert putting out the sort of mature, challenging, artistic work that Williams releases while maintaining her knack for solid grooves and infectious melodies.

At 26, she is already a fine lyricist with a good ear for detail and metaphor. She does a nice job articulating the pain of a one-sided relationship in the Grammy-nominated ‘Dead Flowers’:

Elsewhere, she doubles down on the tough-as-nails reputation she developed over her first two albums (though she doesn’t blow any exes away with a shotgun on Revolution), as in the opening of ‘Heart Like Mine’:

That dichotomy of toughness and sensitivity is one of the most fascinating things about Lambert. In the wake of Gretchen Wilson, the hot-chick-with-a-jug-of-kerosene thing probably came across as good marketing on her first two albums. But it’s increasingly clear that it’s not an act, and neither is the vulnerability she shows on her more intimate songs.

She was “born a red dirt girl,” as she puts it in ‘Airstream Song,’ and that helps make her one of the most refreshing songwriting voices I’ve heard in a long time.

But then things got complicated, as things tend to do.

First it was the country detours by some of my favorite artists — Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, for example. It was tempting to dismiss those albums as ill-advised experiments, but tickling the back of my brain was the complicating knowledge that ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’ and ‘A Good Year For the Roses’ are really good songs.

Then came Lyle Lovett. And hot on his heels, though not as well-represented in my CD collection, came k.d. lang. These were country artists, no question about it, but I justified my appreciation of their work by focusing on everything they did that wasn’t country. Lovett had his big band. Lang had her torch songs. But it was hard to deny that The Road to Ensanada and Absolute Torch and Twang — two of the finest records I own — are country albums.

Over the years a host of artists who could reasonably be considered country found their way into my rotation — people such as Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt, Shelby Lynne, Wilco and Neko Case. Most of them toed the line between alternative rock and country, but I no longer shied away from the tracks that carried the stamp of the south.

And I suppose all those songs and albums served as a gateway drug because years later it was Dixie Chicks and Tim McGraw who made it through the barrier, despite my adamant objections to both of them at first. My wife introduced me to Taking the Long Way and The Dancehall Doctors — country albums through and through — and once I let my defenses down I came to treasure them.

Sugarland came next, with their fantastic album Love on the Inside, and they mark a milestone because they’re a country act I sought out and came to love all on my own.

And so it was that by 2008 the hipster indie rock guy had become at least a casual fan of country music.

I’m recapping this evolution as a preface to my review of Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night because listening to this album felt like the final step in a process that started decades ago. Here is an album that I have come to love not despite its genre but because of it… Paisley has helped me understand exactly why people go nuts over country music.

Being a newcomer to the genre, I don’t know if Brad Paisley is a typical singer-songwriter or the very best country has to offer. I’m inclined to believe the latter because I can’t imagine artists of this quality are a dime a dozen. If they are, I have a lot of catching up to do. I’m already planning to snatch up Paisley’s previous work and it would be daunting to hear he’s just the tip of the iceberg.

No fewer than five songs on American Saturday Night have choked me up to near tears… not because they’re sad but because they’re so touching. Paisley is as sensitive and genuine a writer and singer as I’ve ever heard. He has songs on this album about his son, his wife, his grandpa and his country that are intimate, funny and profound all at once.

Take ‘Welcome to the Future,’ a song about American progress. It starts out funny:

But by the final verse he’s talking about race relations and, though he never mentions the name, this feels like the first country song to capture the meaning of a president named Obama:

Where Paisley really shines is in his unabashed romanticism — this man can make husbands all over the world feel woefully inadequate. On the album’s first single, ‘Then,’ which charted at #1 and was apparently featured on American Idol, he sings about the deepening of love over time. Recapping pivotal moments in the relationship, he marvels: “And I thought I loved you then.”

The bridge is a killer:

Jeez, I want to marry this guy.

Paisley’s wife is actress Kimberly Williams, best known as the daughter in Father of the Bride — a fact he alludes to in the short but sweet reprise to ‘Welcome to the Future’:

Turning his attention to his 2-year-old son, the song ‘Anything Like Me’ is another one that plays sweet and funny before striking a bittersweet tone at the end (it just hit me, Brad Paisley is the Wonder Years of musicians):

A little more than half the album mines similar sentimental territory, and every one of those songs is gold. But the rest are excellent, too, from the title song (which celebrates the American melting pot where a Greek fraternity puts Canadian bacon on their pizza while a girl in Brazilian boots in a German car listens to The Beatles singing ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’) to ‘Catch All the Fish’ (in which Paisley and his buddies vow to do just that, as well as “drink all the beer.”)

I was singing the praises of that song, a glorious bluegrass jam, to my wife when she chuckled and said “You can really relate to that, huh?” Having never gone fishing and never drunk a beer, I laughed along with her. But feeling an affinity for a man with whom I have very little in common — at least on the surface — is part of the appeal.

Take the song ‘No,’ which uses that old cliché about God answering all prayers only sometimes answering ‘No’ as the actual chorus. That’s the sort of thing that could cause eye damage in a cynical atheist like me, so far back into my head would they roll. But damn it if I wasn’t choked up at the end of even that song, which turns into a remembrance of Paisley’s late grandfather.

I’m working on a theory of music and movie equivalence, in which pop songs line up with comedies, heavy metal with horror, indie rock with indie cinema, and so on. Under this theory, good country music parallels movies like The Blind Side… solid, crowd-pleasing entertainment with a sense of humor and the courage to wear its heart on its sleeve. Both can be corny and easy to shoot down. But when they get you, they really get you.

American Saturday Night really got me.

For one thing, Shakira’s best work has been recorded entirely in Spanish, so I have very little idea what she’s saying at all (and I don’t care). And second, her English-language songs alternate between generic love proclamations/condemnations and some of the most oddball, head-scratching lyrics you’re likely to find in a contemporary pop song. This is a woman who once titled a song ‘Poem to a Horse.’

Consider “I’m starting to feel a little abused, like a coffee machine in an office” from ‘She Wolf,’ the title song of her newest album. OK. I applaud her for avoiding clichés, at least… I’ve certainly never heard that one before. In the shuffling ‘Gypsy,’ she declares “‘Cause I’m a gypsy, but are you coming with me? I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me.” In ‘Mon Amour,’ she wishes an ex and his new lover ill will on a trip to France, hoping the “toilet doesn’t flush and the locals treat you mean.” OK, that one’s actually pretty good.

So no, I don’t listen to Shakira for her lyrics. However, I can say without reservation that She Wolf is the best-sounding album I’ve heard all year. Shakira is a notorious perfectionist who obsessed over every detail of this record, blowing through a few release deadlines in the process, and her dedication has paid off in spades.

As on all of her albums, she has blended a host of styles here… She Wolf features dance pop fused with the influences of her Arabic and Colombian background as well as a smattering of rockabilly and Phil Spector. Her choruses are big and fun, her bridges unexpected. She’s a fiercely talented songwriter and producer (who happens to compare herself to a coffee machine).

My chief complaint about She Wolf is its brevity. Though the CD boasts 16 tracks, two of those are live versions barely indistinguishable from their studio counterparts, three are Spanish-language versions of earlier songs, one is a remix and one is a genuine bonus track (featuring Lil Wayne). The album proper includes only nine songs and runs a little over a half hour.

But that’s a complaint only because I want more of such a good thing… those 30 minutes are jam-packed with some of the catchiest, most inventive songs I’ve heard in a long time. Standouts include ‘Men in this Town,’ in which Shakira suggests it’s impossible to find good men in L.A. and laments that Matt Damon is already taken; ‘Spy,’ a duet with Wyclef Jean that leaves their international hit ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ in the dust; and ‘Long Time,’ a super sexy dance jam with a delicious little horn part at the end that typifies the sort of unexpected musical touches she’s so good at.

She Wolf is the first English-language release that rises to the level of Shakira’s Spanish-language work. I suppose she’s comfortable enough with the language now that she can just do what she does, rather than trying the equivalent of throwing a ball with the wrong hand. I don’t know if this album will bring her closer to the global dominance she desires, but it should. In a landscape of cookie-cutout pop acts, Shakira is a true original.

I don’t buy a ton of albums, not compared to true music hounds. I average maybe 15-20 per year, generally the new releases of artists I like and a few attempts to broaden my horizons by picking up something new that’s receiving a lot of acclaim.

Monsters of Folk’s self-titled debut album falls somewhere in between. The band is a “supergroup” made up of members of My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes and She & Him. I loved Jim James’ work on My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges and that’s a large part of the reason I bought this album. I’m less familiar with Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis (who collaborate in Bright Eyes, though it’s mostly Oberst’s show) and I know M. Ward only through his guitar playing on the She & Him album, having never heard his solo work.

2009 was the year of the supergroup, with Tinted Windows, Chickenfoot and Them Crooked Vultures joining Monsters of Folk in releasing albums. I suppose in the age of MP3s and Web releases, it makes sense that artists are experimenting with different lineups and distribution platforms. Why not team up with your peers and throw a couple of tunes on your Web site to test the waters? It’s easier than ever to get instant feedback on all kinds of experimentation.

The original supergroup was The Traveling Wilburys, and Monsters of Folk have been compared to that assemblage of rock legends, if not in stature than in sound. This album has a similar laid-back vibe and the same structure of rotating songwriting and lead singing duties. Still, I think the reasons Monsters of Folk works as well as it does is that these artists are obscure enough (to me, anyway) to avoid it seeming like a collection of solo songs grouped on one release. They feel like a band.

The lineup has been divvied up democratically, with Ward, James and Oberst each singing lead (and presumably writing, though all four share songwriting credits) five songs on the album. Mogis stays out of the spotlight but produced the album and plays a host of instruments on every track.

This album really crept up on me. When I first got it I liked it well enough but assumed it wouldn’t get much playing time. But months later, I find I can’t get this thing out of my CD player and it’s emerged as one of my very favorite albums of the year.

Monsters of Folk is a perfect blend of sounds and sensibilities, combining Jim James’ haunting tenor and experimental song structure, Oberst’s Dylan-lite phrasing and delivery and Ward’s more straight-forward alternative acoustic rock. The men, all of whom have distinctive, lovely voices, sing beautifully in harmony and trade verses on some tracks. The material encompasses straight-up folk music as well as a muscular nod to 60s pop (‘Say Please’), a track that feels ripped from the Johnny Cash songbook (‘A Man Called Truth’) and so much more.

James opens and closes the album with a pair of hypnotic religion-themed songs that feel like holdovers from the Evil Urges sessions. ‘Dear God’ is an open letter to the Big Guy reminiscent (in theme) of XTC’s song of the same name. Final track ‘His Master’s Voice’ imagines a dice game between Christ and Mohammed.

But it’s not all such heady stuff. Ward’s ‘The Sandman, The Brakeman and Me’ is a gentle lullaby about falling asleep on a train, and one of the loveliest tracks on the album. ‘Slow Down Jo’ is an equally pretty track cajoling an over-eager twenty something into taking it easy.

In reading about this album around the Web, I’ve found that each of these guys has a rabid following that looks to attribute everything great on Monsters of Folk to their hero. And looking at it from that perspective, the album does seem a bit like an arms race, with each track an attempt by the next batter up to top the last one. And whether or not that was the intent (my guess is it wasn’t), the result is three expert songwriters/performers producing some of their very best material.

And I think that’s what distinguishes Monsters of Folk from the other supergroups that have emerged this year… this album doesn’t feel like a lark or a side project. It feels like four guys bringing out the best in each other.

‘The Sandman, the Brakeman and Me’:

‘Say Please’:

‘Slow Down Jo’:

By 2008, she had sold more than 12 million albums worldwide and notched more #1 singles than any other woman this decade (or century, or millennium). And she was just 19 years old, having gone from an unknown schoolgirl in a small town in Barbados to an international megastar.

And then, on the night of the 2009 Grammys, she became the most famous victim of domestic violence since Tina Turner when her boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, viciously beat her during an argument in his car. The pictures of Rihanna following the incident were horrific, as was the prospect of her returning to Brown’s side — which she did, briefly, before thinking better of it and leaving him for good.

Now, after nine months of silence, Rihanna has returned to the spotlight, first in an interview about the February incident on 20/20 and, more significantly, with Rated R, her fourth studio album.

Rihanna could have ignored the elephant in the room and put out another album of hook-heavy pop songs — something to rival the fabulous Good Girl Gone Bad, probably the best album of its kind I’ve heard. She also could have tapped into the sadness and pain following that difficult night and recorded an album of poignant ballads. But what she did instead is something altogether more interesting.

Rated R is visceral and dark, a primal scream of sad anger. Its songs are alternately swaggering with bravado and throbbing with the ache of a fresh bruise. The carefree, pretty girl whose first album was titled Music of the Sun has delivered a pitch-black masterpiece that explores her painful descent without once directly addressing it.

Rihanna, who shares writing credits on nine of the albums 13 songs, tackles her battering through violent metaphor.

In the first single, ‘Russian Roulette,’ returning to a dangerous man is compared to spinning the cylinder of a revolver and pulling the trigger:

In ‘Fire Bomb’ the narrator drives a flaming car into her lover (and his house):

In ‘G4L,’ Rihanna leads a gang of angry women with “guns in the air”:

Those aren’t the only songs that seem inspired by the incident: ‘Stupid in Love,’ ‘Photographs’ and ‘Cold Case Love,’ three well-crafted ballads, deal with a lost love in what can best be described as wistful defiance.

I’ve always found it silly that the words “shit” and “ass” are silenced on two tracks of Good Girl Gone Bad. I suppose the record company went that route to avoid having to slap a “Parental Warning” sticker on the album and threaten sales to a younger audience. Rated R, though, is playing by different rules, very much living up to its title.

Rihanna’s new persona is hard-edged and foul-mouthed… she’s Grace Jones meets, well, Rihanna. As she puts it on an early track, “I’m such a fucking lady,” making wonderful use of the Barbadian accent — thick with attitude — that she’s masked on previous albums. She’s not inviting anybody to stand under her umbrella this time around, even as she plays off of her most famous song, repeating the phrase “That Rihanna reign won’t let up” in the propulsive ‘Hard.’

Even the sexy come-on song ‘Rude Boy’ strikes an attitude, as she taunts her lover: “Come on rude boy, boy can you get it up? Come on rude boy, boy is you big enough?” I have a feeling if I were brought before Rihanna in her current state, my answer to both questions would be a resounding no.

I have no doubt this album will be less of a hit than its predecessor, and I’m sure Rihanna knows that too. It’s hard to picture people dancing in a club to heavy songs about violent revenge. A large segment of Rihanna’s audience will likely be thrown by this new direction. But that’s all the more reason I applaud her effort. She has taken the most horrible event in her young life and turned it into a complex work of art.

I was wrong.

Natural Forces is another stop-gap Lyle Lovett album, enjoyable enough for what it is but a shadow of the man’s best work. It contains only four original songs and most of those aren’t even as good as the covers that make up the rest of the album. It’s a pleasure, as always, to hear Lovett and his peerless band perform but it’s a fleeting pleasure when what you really want is the next Road to Ensenada or Joshua Judges Ruth.

The album begins well. The title track, written by Lovett, is a country and western epic accented with a foreboding fiddle. “I’m subject to the natural forces,” Lovett sings… “Home is where my horse is.” Track two, ‘Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel,’ is a traditional Dixie romp that’s enjoyable enough but for the repeated phrase “I’m gonna choke my chicken,” which makes it difficult to listen to in mixed company. ‘Pantry,’ another Lovett original, is a country jam that stretches a food/infidelity metaphor about as far as it can go. The chorus is too repetitive but it’s a fun song. The third song Lovett penned, ‘Empty Blue Shoes,’ is Lyle-by-numbers, a slow blues number that treads ground he’s wandered over for decades.

That’s basically how I feel about the album as a whole… been there, done that and with much better songs. A few of the covers stand out (most notably ‘Bohemia’ and ‘Loretta’) but it feels weird when my favorite songs on a Lyle Lovett album aren’t written by Lyle Lovett.

I wonder if I’d like the album better had I not known the songwriting credits ahead of time. Would ‘Bohemia’ feel like an even better song if I was under the illusion it was penned by Lovett? I’d love to put that theory to the test somehow because it might say a lot about expectations and fandom. Why hold it against a great songwriter if he performs a great song that isn’t his own? I guess because it feels as though he’s wasting precious time he could be contributing something new to the music world.

So Natural Forces is an enjoyable listen but I suspect it will spend most of its time on the shelf. And I’ll keep listening to my favorites while I wait for the next great Lyle Lovett album.

Natural Forces (Live):

Almost every review I’ve read has made a point to comment on the dichotomy between Mayer’s public image (including a popular Twitter account, stand-up comedy routines and frequent appearances on tabloid covers with the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson) and the low-key, earnest music he records.

I suppose that’s an obvious approach, as Mayer has been very much in the public eye during the three years since his last album, the wonderful Continuum. And the thoughtful romantic on his records bears little resemblance to the happy-go-lucky cad stalked by paparazzi. But still, it feels a bit suspicious, as if the record company dictates the storyline.

It irks me because those reviews wind up being about things other than the actual music, and that feels like a disservice. I suppose much of the fault lies with Mayer himself, who chooses to keep himself in the spotlight between albums. But he also manages to release strong material every few years, and I’ll try to concentrate on that.

Releasing a follow-up to Continuum was a thankless task. That album hit on every cylinder, bringing a new depth and sophistication to Mayer’s already stellar knack for a pop hook. It showcased his guitar virtuosity without veering into overkill and rewarded repeat listens. It was the ultimate tough act to follow.

And Battle Studies definitely suffers in that regard. Where Continuum felt like a big step up, this record feels like a step sideways, which is never as interesting. That said, it’s a strong collection of the sort of thing Mayer does very well: mid-tempo pop and blues with jazz flourishes and some fine guitar playing.

Mayer reminds me of a less pretentious, but also less adventurous, Sting. Both have raspy vocals that hint at bedroom eyes; both hone their songs in the studio into expertly layered soundscapes that tease with a little horn section here, a little string section there; both can write infectious singalong choruses in their sleep; and both can sometimes feel a little too safe and studied.

Battle Studies features all of those things, and its first five songs are classic John Mayer — expect to hear them invading the airways any day now. Opener ‘Heartbreak Warfare’ kicks off the love-as-battlefield metaphor that permeates the album with a guitar/bass lick straight out of U2′s playbook. ‘All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye’ is a slow acoustic burner guaranteed to make teenage girls (and boys) swoon.

One of the best songs on the album, the Fleetwood Mac-inspired ‘Half of My Heart,’ is billed as a duet with Taylor Swift but she sings only two lines, and as a backup vocalist. Probably some sort of record company agreement to capitalize on her popularity. Despite that head-scratcher, it’s a fabulously catchy tune about a man who can’t commit:

First single ‘Who Says’ has gotten a lot of attention due to its opening line, “Who says I can’t get stoned?” I’m amazed at how many young fans are appalled that he would suggest such a thing. I don’t know if that’s a positive sign that the next generation is above casual drug use or a negative sign that they’re judgmental dweebs. Maybe somewhere in between. This non-drug user certainly doesn’t care if Mayer or anybody else gets stoned. And the song is a beauty, with a chorus that reminds me of Simon and Garfunkel for some reason (and lord knows they got stoned).

Side One (to the extent that there are “sides” anymore in the CD/iTunes era) ends with ‘Perfectly Lonely,’ an enjoyably bluesy stroll about the merits of single life.

It’s taken me a little longer to warm to Side Two, though I can already feel those songs seeping in. ‘Assassins’ is the most ambitious track on the album, a jazzy, experimental song about a stealthy lover who meets his match. ‘War of My Life’ and ‘Edge of Desire’ are contemplative ballads that weigh the album down a bit in its final third, but appreciated separately they are quite worthy. Two quick songs, ‘Do you Know Me’ and a groovy cover of Robert Johnson’s ‘Crossroads,’ flesh things out.

The album closes with one of my favorite tracks, ‘Friends, Lovers or Nothing,’ a soaring dismissal, tinged with sadness, of an ex who’s looking for a “friends with benefits” situation. I’ve read speculation that this was written about Jennifer Aniston, though I can’t imagine one wouldn’t be just fine with that sort of arrangement with her.

Well, I kept my promise to focus on the actual songs — perhaps to a fault. I look forward to a time when Mayer will be appreciated for his music and not his off-record antics. He has far more to offer the world through a guitar and a microphone than a Twitter account.

Half of My Heart:

Friends, Lovers or Nothing: