JACK JOHNSON > Sleep Through the Static

Jack Johnson can do no wrong. As a surfer, he was sponsored by Quicksilver, next he found success as a filmmaker, and for the 2000s he’s been a singer/songwriter superstar. His fourth full-length album is hardly different than his first three in many respects, and yet, Johnson still has come up a winner.

Label: Brushfire
[Rating: 3 STARS]

Jack Johnson can do no wrong. As a surfer, he was sponsored by Quicksilver, next he found success as a filmmaker, and for the 2000s he’s been a singer/songwriter superstar. His fourth full-length album is hardly different than his first three in many respects, and yet, Johnson still has come up a winner-for while the music doesn’t crest any new breaks, it still catches the waves, riding them out with charm and grace. Sleep Through the Static is just another acoustic pleasantry from the man who is acoustically pleasant. If he adds any weight to what he’s already covered, however, perhaps it can be measured in the increased heaviness of some of the lyrics, which ‘till now have been characteristically laid-back, pajama-wearing love rhymes and the like. “It’s a battle when you dabble with war,” he sings on the title track. “Who needs please when we’ve got guns/Who needs keys when we’ve got gloves/Who needs peace when we’ve gone beyond where we should’ve gone?” Whoa! Is Johnson going all Rage Against the Machine on us? If he is, he’s still doing it in that relaxed, sun-drenched, solar-powered way of his. And you know what? It still sounds great.