Inside Wants Out

After John Mayer hooked up with producer John Alagia, who had previously worked with Dave Matthews, for his second album, Room for Squares, a lot of people heard him as a second Matthews. But a listen to Mayer's first album, Inside Wants Out, half of which turned up in re-recorded form on Room for Squares, is liable to remind the listener more of an earlier antecedent, 1970s folk-jazz performer Michael Franks of "Popsicle Toes" fame. Like Franks, Mayer here has a wheezy, phlegmatic tenor and, though he plays an acoustic guitar that is the focus of the arrangements even when a few other instruments are brought in, he does not restrict himself to folk chords, instead throwing in jazzy elements. His material is better when he cuts through the affectations, however. The best songs, neither of which were repeated on Room for Squares, are "Love Soon" and "Comfortable." In the latter, he sings to a former girlfriend about his current one, illuminating how different one love interest can be from another. "Life of the party, and she swears that she's arty," he notes of the new girl, "but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane," clearly more of an attribute for him. Such an attention to detail in his lyrics (as well as an ear for a well-turned phrase such as his observation that the new girl "poses for pictures that aren't being taken") mark Mayer as an original songwriter, if sometimes a precious one. For the 2002 reissue on Columbia Records, Vlado Miller re-sequenced the brief album, putting the four songs re-used on Room for Squares up front, among them the hit "No Such Thing." But new fans should listen to the rest of the disc as well. They may hear Mayer in a more direct and honest way.