- Critic score
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MojoAs with its predecessor, 2006's Continuum, not a note, not a breadth, is wasted--and the playing, from a crack team including Pino Palladino, Steve Jordan and Ian McLagan, is unfussily superb throughout. [Jan 2010, p. 90]
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While the artist has raised some eyebrows by asking, "Who says I can't get stoned?" (on the album's first single, 'Who Says'), the rest of the collection certainly has the goods to eclipse that overblown controversy.
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Even when the proceedings threaten to get turgid, the intimacy of Mayer’s expression never wavers, and in many ways that’s the album’s greatest victory.
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Battle Studies, by comparison is relaxed and laid back, it’s feet in the air and stripped of extravagance with Mayer simply doing his thang with ease and pazazz.
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Here, Mayer is effortlessly seductive and somewhat irresistible, and it’s easy to see why the ladies love cool John.
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Love as a battlefield.
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Battle Studies is, for the most part, status quo Mayeromics — an expertly calibrated study in soft-pedal confessions, searching lyricism, and mildly groovy guitar licks.
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That deficit [of passion] leaves many of the songs strangely uninvolving, despite the beauty of his melodies and empathetic production he and drummer Steve Jordan have given them.
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Mayer’s albums were maturing one after the other, combining electric blues and clever songwriting, but he takes a few steps back with the lovelorn Battle Studies, a superficial meditation on the jagged down-slope of a relationship—the romantic blitzkrieg that recalls, among other genres, his early acoustic sound on "Room for Squares."
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Battle Studies is terrific when Mayer drops the seriousness, pondering and sending up his reputation as a rake.
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It would be unfair to call Battle Studies an outright misfire, but it’s undoubtedly a regression on his winding, forward-moving path toward artistic maturity. Two steps forward, one step back then.
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His latest mundane disc lacks edge despite sometimes aiming for U2.
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Q MagazineWhile Heartbreak Warfare and War Of My Life chug pleasantly along in their Police-lite way, and Taylor Swift makes the briefest of cameos on the bittersweet half Of My Heart, true inspiration, as ever, remains a conspicuous absentee. [Jan 2010, p. 120]
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His vocals here are mostly murmurs, and the musical accompaniment, though skillful throughout, lacks the punch of his previous albums.
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Mayer's talents are obvious, but there's so much more cheese than charm here that he would seem like a hard sell outside the Billboard heartland.
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Instead of the dynamic sound Mayer is capable of, he has instead continued along the same nicely-paved road he has ridden his whole studio career, a path that has always elicited the same reaction from this writer – a shrug.
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It's clear that he's capable of far more than this. What's most puzzling and disappointing about Battle Studies, then, is that its banality seems like a deliberate choice.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 56 out of 76
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Mixed: 14 out of 76
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Negative: 6 out of 76
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KaiRNov 30, 2009
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LisaBNov 30, 2009
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RichardMNov 29, 2009