It's (not) a wonderful life
Nearly half a year on from debuting at Number 5 on the U.S. Billboard chart (with 90,000 copies sold in the first week alone!) Jason Mraz's sophomore album "Mr A.Z" finally gets a UK release on the back of his upcoming tour dates in support of England's blandest singer-songwriter James Blunt. This album has already earned veteran U2 producer Steve Lillywhite two Grammy nominations for its luxuriously smooth production but what about the songs themselves?
Opener "Song For A Friend" is the kind of saccharine pop rock that has propelled Mraz to fame on the other side of the Atlantic. It's lyrically cringe worthy ("l-l-l-l-life is wonderful") and musically only a djembe away from being an Enrique Iglesias single. The jaunty A.M. radio friendly "Wordplay" is a significant improvement, Mraz attempting to cram as many words as possible into one of the album's finest moments, its soaring chorus worming its way into the listeners consciousness with consummate ease . The awkward "Geek In The Pink" follows and is a woefully, inadvisable stab at melding acoustic guitars with dated hip hop beats and squelchy synth bass.
At the other end of the stylistic spectrum is "Mr Curiosity", a forgettably dreary piano ballad that is somehow further diminished by the rather perplexing inclusion of some operatic flourishes in its final passage. Mraz definitely sounds more comfortable on the straightforward pop rock numbers including the lilting acoustic number "Clockwatching". While "Mr A.Z." rarely strays from the middle of the road there are signs that its creator is willing to expand his musical palate (one thing you certainly can't say of his peers) - witness the jazzy, almost Santana-ish "Bella Luna" and the calypso percussion of "Please Don't Tell Her". Alas the album as a whole is weighed down by clichéd lyricism and good old fashioned by-the-book formulaic singer-songwriter earnestness. This is none more evident than on "Plane" which promises to explode in a crescendo of guitars but ends up as a damp squib.
"Please Don't Tell Her" is the undoubted highlight of the album by sharp contrast, a mid-tempo piano led number that re-imagines Coldplay's "Yellow" for the O.C. generation. Mraz certainly can't be faulted for the sheer effort he puts into his vocal performance on this number. Unfortunately all the good work is undone on the tedious coffee shop jazz of "Wordplay" which somehow achieves the undesirable feat of making Jamie Cullum sound cutting edge. While the less said by yours truly about epic album closer "Life Is Wonderful" (and its cod soul) the better. A good proportion of "Mr A.Z." would sit quite comfortably on the Radio 2 daytime schedules but quite why Americans have been so enamoured by this rather run of the mill affair is hard for this reviewer to fathom. Hopefully the British public will show more common sense and buy the infinitely superior Jose Gonzales album instead.