Continuum

At every turn, Continuum finds Mayer to be a mature, thoughtful, and gifted musician who fully grasps his place not just in the record industry, but in life.

Mayer's fourth album is silky smooth, beautifully played and sung, and yes, sometimes it becomes so professional that it verges on the bland.

A smart, breezy album that deftly fuses his love for old-school blues and R&B with his natural gift for sharp melodies and well-constructed songs.

Many of Continuum's songs are on the softer, adult alternative side, but his melodic voice, warm production, complex riffs and thoughtful lyrics should cure the violent reactions Mayer's name used to evoke.

While Continuum doesn’t necessarily contain a sure-thing pop hit, it’s one of the few mainstream pop/rock albums that’s satisfying from the beginning to the end.

His self-produced third album, Continuum, is a John Mayer record par excellence: taut, melodic, well sung, impeccably played…and deadly dull.

A couple songs on Continuum do hint at what Mayer is capable of if he can shed his perfectionist skin and get to the quick of his emotions.

If nothing else, what Continuum confirms is that Mayer, as an awfully good guitarist and a considerably less-good singer-songwriter, hasn’t yet figured out how he can build upon the legacies of the men he cites as influences, but that he has the ambition and the desire to keep trying until he gets it right.