John Mayer – review

Where did it all go right for John Mayer? By rights, his core skill – his nimbleness as a blues guitarist – should have fetched him a career on the folk-roots fringe. Instead, the man is a proper rock star: there are Grammys on his mantelpiece, he has a celebrity girlfriend in Katy Perry and he's got enough money for hundreds of the rich-hippie silver chains dangling from his neck. Mayer is certainly the only blues and roots player whose love life makes tabloid headlines and gives him licence to be indiscreet. One of the songs he performs, Paper Doll, amblingly dissects a fling with Taylor Swift, who perhaps doesn't deserve to have details such as "You're like 22 girls in one … you should've kept my undershirt" crooned to a sold-out arena.

But celebrity now seems to rankle. "You can go to the internet to see things I've said in the past," he tells us sternly. "Some were exciting, others you don't want to look at. But let's just keep it to the music." This he does. A heads-down-and-get-to-work type, Mayer starts with songs from his most recent album, Paradise Valley, then visits the previous five studio albums, seasoning the set with covers that suit his heartfelt, rootsy style, including an authentically stoned-sounding Grateful Dead track, Going Down the Road Feeling Bad.

Behind him, a desert landscape evolves with the music: there's a star-sprinkled night sky during the smoky blues jam I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You); later, the sun rises as he plays the optimistic acoustic chords of Queen of California. It's all very fine – the improvisational Belief shows why Eric Clapton calls him "Slowhand Jr". But it also reveals that, without the celeb trimmings, Mayer is a rather anonymous craftsman whose only aim is to blend in with his (excellent) band. So how did he make the leap from the songwriter middle ranks to arena-filler? That question remains unanswered.

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