In Between Dreams [Digipak] by Jack Johnson

Bring up the name Jack Johnson and it's impossible not to find yourself meandering over to the phrase "laid-back." Sure, other artists have taken a relaxed approached to some of their recordings, but no one else has built their entire oeuvre so narrowly and solidly around nothing more than a lone acoustic guitar, a gentle bass line, and a simple snare drum and tambourine rhythm. He even manages to out-Jimmy Buffet Jimmy Buffet himself. Every single song on Johnson's albums whisks us, the listeners, away to a secluded tropical beach in his native Hawaii, where we can feel the warm sun beating down on us and hear the gentle surf crashing on the pristine sand.

Yep, every single song...

sigh

That's the problem. Early in 2002, Johnson brought us his debut, Brushfire Fairytales, and the gentle tropical strains were like a breath of fresh air in a sea of overproduced commercial pop. A year and a half later, he returned with the same formula on On and On, and it felt like getting together with an old friend from college a few years after graduation and falling right back into the same old conversations and jokes. And now in March of 2005, we've got In Between Dreams, and it's starting to feel like Johnson has gotten stuck in a rut.

There really isn't anything that Johnson has done wrong on the album, but there are just so many missed opportunities on so much territory that's already been explored before. Give a listen to the bouncy, carefree Banana Pancakes. The accompaniment, played by Johnson all by himself on his acoustic guitar, suits the laid-back, lighthearted tone of the lyrics, but Johnson already recorded an almost identical song back when he played Bubbletoes and Mud Football on his debut album. Songs like Staple it Together and Good People add in a splash of jazzy musicianship with their sharp percussion lines and deep bass rhythms, but they don't offer anything that we didn't already have with The Horizon Has Been Defeated, the lead single from On and On. To add to this feeling that we've been here before, Staple it Together and Good People offer the exact same sort of light social commentary that The Horizon Has Been Defeated gave us a year and a half ago, but they fail to leap out as memorably this time around.

There are a few moments where Johnson stretches the boundaries of his laid-back island pop grooves. Take Crying Shame as an example. Johnson mixes in a few elements of soul for the song's arrangement, but it ends up sounding like a re-imagined version of Rodeo Clown off of On and On (which was itself, a re-recording of a song Johnson had already recorded with G. Love). Do You Remember features a hint of the twang of classic American folk music, but the feel is no different from Losing Hope or Inaudible Melodies from On and On. The only moment that actually explores new grown for Johnson comes with Belle, a flowing, languid piece of bossa nova complete with accordion backdrop and soft, seductive lyrics sung in French. Shades of Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Jobim float up through the chords, but the song feel like forgotten cast off, clocking in at only a minute and a half.

Newcomers to Johnson's music will certainly enjoy the album and will find his laid back style a refreshing break from everything else out there. The album's lead single, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing, with its deceptively relaxed acoustic rhythms and subtly intense lyrical explorations of a relationship grown stagnant, makes for one the stronger singles thus far this year and one of the album's most attention-drawing moments. Newcomers to Johnson, though, wont be familiar with songs like Fluke or Bubbletoes, both songs that far outshine anything offered on In Between Dreams.

Most disappointing, though, is the idea of what thing could have been like. Last year, Johnson guested on the album White People by The Hansom Boy Modeling School. Together with producers Prince Paul and Dan the Autonomator, Johnson co-wrote the song Breakdown. As it appeared on White People, Breakdown features rich, layered production with strings, wistful whistling mixed with kazoo, melancholy horn loops, and just a hint of a hip-hop beat. Not only did the recording feature a perfect backdrop for the world-weary feel of the lyrics, it also featured a new-refreshing sound that Johnson had never explored before. When it came time to record the song for his own In Between Dreams, though, he simply recast the tune as another simple, stripped-down, acoustic beach tune. Not only does the song end up sounding like everything else Johnson has done, betraying any new ground he explored with The Handsome Boy Modeling School, the song's new laid-back arrangement just doesn't the weary, worn-down feel of the lyrics.

In Between Dreams is a pleasant enough listen, especially for those just jumping onto Johnson's bandwagon, but it wallows in a "been there - done that" feeling. Reliving past successes is all well and good for a little while, but it's time to move on now. Growth is good. It keeps us on our toes and teaches us things about ourselves that we might never have learned otherwise. Here's hoping that Johnson's next release brings us that long overdue leap to another level that we should already heave gotten by now.