Sob Rock vinyl

"I'm somewhere between a pop artist and a jam band-maybe closer to pop artist," John Mayer recently told Kerwin Frost in a YouTube interview. Given the fact he makes a sideline as the touring guitarist for the Grateful Dead - a band vying for position as most ironically named given the length of their live history - and his latest record sounds like Sob Rock, in both title and sonics, it's not hard to see why he's come up with that kind of career summation.

It is, of course, purposefully reductive and awkwardly self-deprecating, in a self-conscious kind of way. And that attitude certainly rings true on this record, which despite being pretty grand in terms of scope, scarcely a 'small' track on here, always feels slightly withdrawn. Nevertheless, from the stadium balladry of 'All I Want Is To Be With You', through to the Clapton-esque blues of 'I Guess I Just Feel Like', it's Mayer on real form.