Jack Johnson - In Between Dream - sunny laid back domestic bliss

Jack Johnson rose to popularity as something of a Renaissance man in the early days of the twenty-first century.  A professional surfer, independent film maker and laid back singer songwriter, Johnson hails from Hawaii with an aw-shucks grin and shoeless approach to love, life and music.  Jack Johnson comes across as the guy who has the life every guy wants to live, but we're not so lucky. 


Like Jimmy Buffett and James Taylor before him, his songs have a lilting breezy quality belying their quiet sophistication.  And also like those artists, his rather narrow range results in a body of work so consistent his albums tend to blend together.


This constant casual groove makes In Between Dreams such a delightful pleasure.  Johnson ruminates on domestic bliss with a keen eye for the details that bring his characters and settings to vivid life.  The sense of domesticity in a tropical paradise bubbles up over and over again.  The natural world pervades every tune and time runs slow.

The quietly acoustic settings and mid tempo tunes really give the sense of a bunch of friends in a circle playing for their own pleasure.  The musicianship sounds both casual and sophisticated simultaneously just as Johnson's nimble phrasing owes a debt to hip hop wordplay more than traditional rock and roll.  In fact, he does make music with the same circle of buddies - G. Love, Matt Costa and Donavon Frankenreiter among  others, touring together, appearing on their albums and vice versa.

He sings about family from a sweet place and it seems no surprise that he followed this album up with the soundtrack to the Curious George animated movie.  I love the sense of joy and the calming spirit of these hip sing-alongs and they have served as the soundtrack to many of my family vacations.  The first scrapes of his guitar strings from Better Together literally put me in a peaceful state and his ruminations on his love ring true.

The remaining songs flow from the same waters.  Moderate tempos, pretty melodies with interesting rhythms  and  sweet stories (or pleas for a sweeter world than the one in which we live) breeze into each other until the last song drifts off into the breeze.  It all sounds easy and I can't help but think this guy despite having it all, still sounds humble, singing straight from his great big heart.

I can truly relate to these little homey stories. Jack was born in mid-May, I was born in mid-May.  Jack married his college sweetheart, Kim and I married my college sweetheart, Kim.  Jack has three kids and I have three kids.  Jack and I have are exactly the same, give or take the rock star / surfer / film maker thing.

Like Buffett and Taylor (and I, for that matter), it has become clear that Jack Johnson will not garner much respect as a great artist.  His music is too cozy and his range too narrow despite his efforts to stretch out on later works.  He offers none of the typical rock star drama and danger so present in our manufactured popular culture, continuing to live in Hawaii with his wife and kids and focusing on his work and environmentalist charity.  Of course taking care of his family and making the world a better place for them doesn't seem like such a bad life after all.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Live / 1975-85 - The Boss delivers on the promise

With Born In The USA, Bruce Springsteen finally became the mega-star critics and the faithful had been expecting for over a decade.  He reached a massive worldwide audience by delivering what he always had:  poetic tales of the hopeful and oppressed set to a walloping rock and roll beat.  And if some of the newcomers missed the point of the title track, the Boss made his position clear when he pushed back when President Reagan tried to co-op his message for Republican political gains.


His follow-up to the album that dominated the airwaves of 1985 was a sprawling five album box set before such packages were commonplace.  And it perfectly served a wide variety of purposes.  First, it bought Springsteen time to clear his mind from the craziness that was Born In The USA.  Time to craft an appropriate response to the changes in America and his personal life that would be the 1987's Tunnel Of Love.


Secondly it finally offered the live document of the E Street Band's legendary concert experience, widely bootlegged but previously unavailable in any official capacity.  Finally the set offers up a history of the E Street Band and Springsteen's body of work up to this point, bringing the new audience up to speed with the what the cult had known all along.  E Street Band guitarist and Little Steven Van Zandt had famously produced The River to catch the sound and fire of the band's live show for that album.  

The truly amazing fact in hindsight is how well Live / 1975-86 delivers on all fronts simultaneously.  Over the course of three and a half hours (roughly the length of a typical Springsteen show) the Boss' grows from backstreet poet playing small Jersey Shore clubs to American Icon selling out stadiums.  Both subtle and clearly logical, the tracks unfold seamlessly.

The songs universally deliver higher energy and emotional truth superior to the beloved studio versions.  Songs from the early albums are more full and wildly energetic in the live setting.  The Nebraska tracks stand up well with the rest of the catalog, fully fleshed out and powerful.  The Born To Run wall of sound comes through loud and clear and the songs from the River are both lighter and tougher in this setting.  And as a showcase for his total body of work, Springsteen could not have delivered a better document.

Thunder Road starts off with an intimate piano arrangement that highlights the quiet desperation driving the lovers into the unknown.  Born In The USA roars with the tortured venom of the desperate veteran returning home only to find he has somehow become the enemy himself.  And Springsteen's legendary on stage stories and comments relieve the tension (such as "this is for all the girls here" delivered with a chuckle before Fire) or bring clarity to the songs (on the introduction to Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land, pointing out that the schoolhouse favorite is really "an angry song").

A single track sums up the entire experience over the course of eleven and a half minutes.  With sympathetic guitar noodling in the background, Springsteen tells a story of growing up with a father that just didn't understand his son during the Viet Nam years.  As he finishes the tale, he launches into a harmonica driven  version of The River.  The band locks in behind him until the a breakdown near the end of the track.  One can see the singer with his back to the audience, head down, moaning low until the the drums kick in and the weight of fate and desperation pours out into a rolling coda, the band grown into a living, breathing beast.

Here the Boss sums up the deliverance offered only by rock and roll.  Like Roy Orbison, he's singing for the lonely and hey that's me and you.