We Drew Our Own Constellations

Jack Johnson's music crept up on me out of nowhere. Without any airplay or video spins, it seemed like every one of my friends all of the sudden became infatuated with him a few years ago. I, too, caught the bug with his laid back approach to music and the best storytelling of this generation. Eventually his albums Brushfire Fairytales and On and On were on heavy rotation on my CD player. It is a good chance that his latest album, In Between Dreams will join the other two.

With the first listen to In Between Dreams, it doesn’t deviate from the style of it predecessors. The songs are sparse, with the Jack on the guitar and unassuming bass and percussion on most tracks with the occasional piano and accordion. And like his previous work, when you close your eyes, you can envision yourself on the beach with your buddies around a bonfire, sipping on some mai-tai’s.

Lyrically, Johnson strives at just lounging around, enjoying life. In the album opener, Better Together, he sings, “Oh the places we got to be we’ll sit beneath the mango tree.” He even tries other to join him in his lounging on Banana Pancakes, “Pretend like it’s the weekend and we can pretend it all the time. Can’t you see that it’s raining, there ain’t no need to go outside.” The best of these songs is Breakdown where Johnson, with nothing better to do, hopes his train breaks down so he can just walk around and enjoy the scenery. I was slightly disappointed when I first heard the song on the album because I originally heard a remixed version by the Handsome Boy Modeling School that I really enjoy. Eventually, I did grow to like this acoustic version of the song.

Johnson has more on his mind than just hanging out with nothing to do. On Good People he ponders “Where’d all the people go?” With the line, “How many train wrecks do we need to see?” seems like knock at all the Osbornes type reality shows, or all reality shows in general for that matter. While the 24-hour news channels seem to be the genesis for the lines, “Bad news misused, got too much to lose. Give me some truth now, who’s side are you on?” The war on Iraq seems to be on his mind on Crying Shame, with lines like “A number of people are numbers that ain’t coming home,” but mankind, itself seems to be the central topic of the song, “By now we should be able to communicate instead of coming to blows.”

As with his pervious albums, Johnson adds some short interludes in between the song, most notably Belle, a song sung mostly in French. Although three years of French and I could only translate one line, “Je ne comprends pas francais (I don’t understand French).” I only remember that because that’s a line I was constantly saying in the class, because, in fact, I didn't understand anything that came out of the teacher's mouth. The album comes to a great conclusion with the mellow Constelllations, a song about laying on you back, on a clear night, sand staring at the stars, just the way you should listen to this album.

Song to Download – Breakdown (Or check out the Handsome Boy Modeling School version of Breakdown)

In Between Dreams gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.