Jack Johnson

Capturing the mellow vibes and laidback atmosphere of Hawaii that makes all Harvardians yearn for sunny beaches and spring break, Jack Johnson once again returns to the roots that have made him a perennial surfer favorite. Despite a clearly discernible continuity with his first five albums, “Sleep Through the Static” represents a greater awareness of world events and the modern, hectic lifestyle embodied in a somber tone and occasionally biting lyrics. But despite the new material, there is little growth in musical style from his earlier efforts.

Befitting Johnson’s Hawaiian heritage and previous life as a professional surfer, “Sleep Through the Static” is imbued with references to unspoiled natural beauty, with a particular emphasis on water. Not to risk hypocrisy, Johnson recorded the album in solar-powered studios, printed his liner notes on recycled paper, and is donating 1% of the album sales to environmental organizations. In line with his praiseworthy dedication to the environment, Johnson’s repeated references to the cyclical life of water provide a vivid and powerful backdrop for his message of emotional release and renewal.

“Sleep Through the Static,” the second track on the album, at first seems to share little with the other thirteen tracks, which sound like Johnson’s usual fare. Its clear anti-war stance is ostensibly far-removed from the acutely personal and emotional themes of tracks like “Angel” and “If I Had Eyes.” But “Sleep Through the Static” actually establishes an important thematic thread that runs throughout the album—a motif of embracing sensation even when it brings pain.

While expressing an inability to understand the world when he is “stuck between channels,” Johnson argues that the current political climate forces a choice between “pushing for peace” and “supporting the troops.” At the end of this provocative song, Johnson takes a step back and offers his observation that humanity has gone “beyond where we should have gone” by allowing personal relationships to falter.

To make this point, Johnson returns to the original relationship between Adam and Eve in “They Do, They Don’t.” Eschewing the overtly religious connotations of such a reference, Johnson chooses instead to highlight the profound human desire for experience that Eve demonstrates by eating from the tree of knowledge. In order to instill this desire in his listeners, Johnson uses two of his strongest songs, “Angel” and “What You Thought You Need,” to remind us to slow down and appreciate the journey because “it’s all for the sake of arriving here.”

Though this album features a more complicated message than the feel-good tunes that populated Johnson’s earlier work, the musical style is quite similar. The lack of variation within “Sleep Through the Static” does create a coherent sound, but risks boring the listener. Large differences between track lengths (“While We Wait” is only one and a half minutes, while others hover between two and five minutes) do create a feeling of spontaneity, but this alone is not enough to make his sixth studio album stand out from the rest of the corpus.

—Reviewer Eric M. Sefton can be reached at esefton@fas.harvard.edu.