September 14, 2003

Romantics of the Road: The Next Generation

S archetypes go, the wandering songwriter may well be eternal. That figure is as old as African griots, Greek bards and French troubadours, and it rejuvenates with every generation of lone guitar-slingers. Technology stole many of the roles of the old troubadours; they no longer have to carry news from afar or memories of history. Praise songs for particular patrons have given way to love songs anyone can use. What remains for troubadours is to look inward. Now, the job as it has been defined for most of a century is to tell a settled audience about a life in motion, torn between the need to connect and the urge to move on. John Mayer and Josh Ritter, two husky-voiced songwriters in their mid-20's, sing on their new albums about both the romance of the road and the roads taken by romantics.

Mr. Mayer is melancholic, insecure and chronically dissatisfied on his new album, "Heavier Things" (Aware/Columbia), while Mr. Ritter is confident and full of hopeful promises on his "Hello Starling" (Signature Sounds).

Yet by any commercial measure, they ought to be reversed. Mr. Mayer's 2001 studio album, "Room for Squares" (Aware/Columbia), sold three million copies and made him a Grammy winner and pop figure: the sweet, thoughtful guy plucking jazzy guitar syncopations and huskily crooning endearments like "Your Body Is a Wonderland." Mr. Ritter, whose folky fingerpicking and basic harmonies hark back to 1960's songwriters, is still on the coffeehouse and college circuit in the United States; he's better known in Ireland, where his albums have reached the top 10.

But he sounds like he's having a much better time than Mr. Mayer. On "Room for Squares" (and its live follow-up album, "Any Given Thursday"), Mr. Mayer's character was vulnerable and seductive: lonely on the road, modestly self-conscious, pondering the meaning of life and, in the end, telling his lovers all the right things: "I can't remember life before her name."

Yet seductions recede and existential crises mount on "Heavier Things," which lives up to its title in both its sound and its ruminations. While Mr. Mayer's earlier songs were often on the verge of melting into boudoir ambience, all warm and fuzzy, his new ones have more backbone and more substance.

"Heavier Things" is still the work of a pop smoothie designing choruses for the radio, like the ones in "Only Heart," "Clarity" and "Bigger Than My Body." But he's also a character who would give a lot for a little equanimity. After two positive-thinking songs, "Clarity" and "Bigger Than My Body," the album descends into gloom. "I can't be sure this state of mind/ Is not of my own design," he admits.

Mr. Mayer was always a fan of the Police; he mentioned "Wrapped Around Your Finger" in "83," and sang "Message in a Bottle" on "Any Given Thursday." On "Heavier Things," Mr. Mayer not only sings with the breathy phrasing and slurred enunciation he learned from Sting (with a touch of Dave Matthews) but also gives his guitar the rainwater tone and rippling echoes of Andy Summers.

His new songs pick up the patterned intricacies and jazz harmonies that underpinned the Police's songs, while providing his own multilayered hooks. Transparent modal lines interlock, Police-style, in "Home Life" and "Wheel"; the arpeggios and pulsating choruses of "Bigger Than My Body" directly suggest "Every Breath You Take," while the suspended chords of "New Deep" come directly from "Walking on the Moon." And if Sting has designated himself King of Pain, Mr. Mayer is more than willing to play the crown prince.

Romantically, he's not in wonderland any more. "All you need is love is a lie," he moans. "Come Back to Bed," "Split Screen Sadness" and "Only Heart" are about relationships coming apart, while in "Daughters," he blames a girlfriend's inconstancy on her parents' bad example. The best he can hope for, in "Wheel," is that things are cyclical, and that he'll be luckier the next time around.

Breaking up is only one of his burdens. In "Something's Missing," Mr. Mayer catalogs all the things that should be making him happy — friends, money, "opposite sex" — and finds that they don't erase a chronic loneliness. He's desperate to escape his own relentless self-analysis in "New Deep," where he's "trying not to find every little meaning in my life." And in "Home Life," he longs for exactly the stability that the wandering songwriter gives up. "I refuse to believe that my life's gonna be just some string of incompletes," he sings. But most homebodies don't set themselves up for such intriguing troubles.

Mr. Ritter embraces the troubadour role more easily. "I'm not sure if I'm singing for the love of it or for the love of you," he declares in "Snow Is Gone." Throughout the album, he can't keep songs off his mind, though he's also determined to seize the romantic moment while it lasts.

Born in Idaho, educated at Oberlin and most recently based in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Mr. Ritter has, like Mr. Mayer, spent most of the 21st century on the road. The songs on his 2002 album, "Golden Age of Radio," flaunted more place names, but the ones on "Hello Starling" are still infused with impermanence.

He warns potential partners that he's "a man burning at both ends," and he makes few promises beyond the present. But when he's infatuated, he doesn't hold back. "Kathleen," a robustly strummed waltz that is the album's most memorable song, carries lines like, "All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights," and its simple offer of a ride home implies considerably more.

Mr. Ritter hasn't escaped his obvious influences. He's a deliberate throwback to the 1960's and early 1970's, with pared-down production and hardly a glimmer of funk or jazz. He's clearly a fan of Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks," as well as Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt and Paul Simon. "California" subtly recalls "Dancing in the Moonlight" by King Harvest; "Bright Smile" hints at Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry."

But amid the familiar sounds, Mr. Ritter's kindly intelligence shines. In "Rainslicker," a lovers' reunion takes on biblical resonances; in "Baby That's Not All," as an organ line rises behind his acoustic guitar, Mr. Ritter promises to hold someone like "a steeple holds a bell/ the night sky holds the moon." He weighs his similes carefully, but he never sounds calculating, and the old folky frameworks still promise uncontrived sincerity.

"Bone of Song" is a quiet, hugely ambitious and perfectly balanced song about nothing less than the spirit of music. Mr. Ritter finds a mystical artifact with an inscription that warns, "I'll remember your song, but I'll forget your name," and that defines the songwriting impulse as "the only unquiet ghost that does not seek rest." He's comfortable with that as a troubadour who will welcome the next stop, and the ones after that.