Modest musical men make millions

NE OF THE KEY LINES ON ONE OFthe best-selling albums in America is this: "I'm gonna find out just how boring I am."
If there is a less promising ticket to the top of the pop chart, I'm not sure what it would be. But John Mayer's "Heavier Things" (Aware/Columbia) still debuted at No. 1 this month. Mayer sells albums in extraordinary numbers -- his previous release, "Room for Squares," topped 3 million -- but he does it by celebrating his ordinariness.
Mayer joins Dave Matthews, Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba, Coldplay's Chris Martin and a host of other guy-next-door singers clogging the Billboard top 100. They specialize in making ultra-sincere, soft-rock albums about the regular-guy blues. These songwriters know a thing or three about writing catchy melodies and singing plaintively about the geography of a broken heart. In their wimpiest moments, they also make Bread's David Gates sound as outrageous as Marilyn Manson.
Matchbox Twenty's Rob Thomas and Train's Pat Monahan have turned modesty into millions of record sales. Before them, Hootie and the Blowfish did the same. Now comes the latest wave. Dashboard Confessional recently debuted at No. 2 with its third album, "A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar" (Interscope), and Matthews' solo debut, "Some Devil" (RCA), is expected to emerge as one of the year's top sellers when it arrives in stores this week.
Lucrative for the modest
Mayer and the rest owe a debt to Matthews for making the rock world lucrative for the regular dude. For a decade, Matthews has transformed a decidedly un-rock 'n' roll persona -- he has the casually rumpled look of a video-store clerk -- into a stadium-rock meal ticket. Last year, on tour with his longtime quintet, the Dave Matthews Band, he piled up $60 million in tour revenue. Last summer, he was selling out amphitheaters across North America. He's trumpeting the arrival of his latest, "Some Devil" with a concert in New York's Central Park.
Though "Some Devil" finds Matthews recording without his regular collaborators, it isn't a major departure. He trims the fancy solos and fussy riffs and fills, blows out some of the arrangements with an orchestra, and shrinks some of the others by recording with little more than a guitar for accompaniment. But his primary instrument -- a voice with more idiosyncrasies than a David Lynch movie -- still chases melodies that drift in and out of view like a mirage.
Drummer Brady Blade provides much-needed ballast; he gives Matthews' songs a more consistent, rock-solid pulse, a major plus after years of puttering and fluttering from his regular rhythm section. Blade stokes "Gravedigger" until it feels like the arena anthem Matthews never had; the drummer also brings a dash of world-beat exotica that the "Graceland"-era Paul Simon might covet and a touch of New Orleans second-line strut to "Dodo."
Slackness prevails
Phish's Trey Anastasio makes a couple of welcome cameos on electric guitar, toughening up the sound and casting a swampy spell over "Grey Blue Eyes." But the rubbery interaction of Matthews' regular band does leave a void. They could always be counted on to fill the gaps in the singer's less developed songs, and the weaker tracks on "Some Devil" (oatmeal ballads "Oh" and "Baby," the over-orchestrated "Too High," the tissue-thin "Stay or Leave") could have used some of their fancy-finger exercises as a distraction.
But the singer doesn't sweat the details. His ambling, shambling let-the-good-times-roll slackness prevails. On "Some Devil," he behaves like a man who knows he doesn't have any solutions for the ills outside his estate and isn't particularly troubled by it: "The world is blowin' up, the world is cavin' in, the world has lost her way again, but you are here with me ... makes it OK."
Mayer's "Heavier Things" is, as advertised, a bit weightier than his 2001 major-label breakthrough album, but it won't rattle anyone's speaker cabinets. The exceptions are "Bigger Than My Body," which bursts through its lush surroundings to deliver a radio-courting chorus, and "Come Back to Bed," a horn-spackled soul ballad that allows Mayer to stretch his underrated guitar-playing muscles.
'Heavier Things'
Otherwise, the Atlanta singer is comfortably mired in the familiar. His smooth voice bespeaks a nonrock lushness: He's a closet bossa-nova freak who could be Norah Jones' fraternal twin. He sings about the everyday world of somebody who is not a rock star. "Daughters" dispenses homespun parenting advice, and "New Deep" refuses to let dark thoughts intrude, a sentiment that Matthews would likely appreciate. In "Home Life," Mayer fantasizes about a 9-to-5 job that will allow him to "sit in traffic on the highway" and exist "in the slow-mo." My 94-year-old grandmother sounds like she has a more exciting life than this guy.
With its carefully appointed pop tunes, "Heavier Things" would seem to be world's worlds apart from the one conjured by Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba. But Carrabba's brand of emo-punk isn't that far removed from Mayer's vaguely jazzy lounge-pop or Matthews' Everyman stadium rock. On "A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar," infidelities continue to scream at Carrabba, and he responds with sing-along anthems. But no matter how dire things get, he keeps plugging. He may be festooned with a punk rocker's tattoos, but he's got the mind of a lovesick balladeer.
With his earlier idiosyncrasies obscured by beefier production, Carrabba has never sounded more ready for the mainstream. His songs are every bit as sincere and cuddly as those of Mayer and Matthews, and his arrangements have the streamlined inevitability (conversational verse, punch-the-sky chorus) of a singer who'd rather smooth the waves than make them. "This night is wild, so calm and dull/These hearts they race from self-control," he sings on "Hands Down." In the world of the regular guys, making records is just like another quiet evening at home.