Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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California-based singer/songwriter Jason Mraz makes laid-back, melodic pop with stylistic nods toward folk, jam band music, hip-hop, and soft rock. Since coming to the public's attention with his 2002 hit single "The Remedy (Don't Worry)", Mraz has proven himself to be a reliable pop craftsman whose crowd-pleasing melodies can encompass both cheeky humor and earnest sincerity.

Born in Mechanicsville, Virginia, in 1977, Mraz grew up amidst the sounds of the Dave Matthews Band and local roots musicians the Agents of Good Roots. However, it was Mraz's interest and participation in musical theater that served as his first introduction to music. Following high school, he moved to New York to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, but dropped out a year later when he took up the guitar and began to focus on songwriting. Nonetheless, Mraz's training as a vocalist would later show itself on his debut album, which was marked by the pure clarity of his tenor range.

After busking around New York, Mraz eventually returned to Virginia; in 1999, however, he made his way out West and settled in San Diego, California, having been drawn to the city's coffee house scene and its historical support of singer/songwriters, most notably Jewel. Mraz began playing shows and soon landed a weekly residency at the local hot spot Java Joe's, which had previously played host to Jewel during the early stages of her career. He also formed a duo with drummer Noel "Toca" Rivera, who accompanied Mraz's acoustic material by banging the djembe. Together, the musicians honed a live show that featured as much comedic banter as actual music.

Over the next two years, Mraz's following expanded outside of the San Diego limits and began to encompass Los Angeles, garnering the attention of record labels. Mraz signed to Elektra Records in early 2002 and returned to Virginia to write and record his debut album, a project that saw him working with producer John Alagía (the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer) and his high school heroes, the Agents of Good Roots, who became his backing band. The resulting effort, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, was released that same November, blending Mraz's early influences with elements of country, roots rock, and coffee house folk. The buoyant first single "Remedy (I Won't Worry)," which Mraz had co-written with pop hitmakers the Matrix, proved to be a big hit, and Mraz headed out on the road to support it. One of those shows, an October 2003 date at the Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee, was later documented on Mraz's summer 2004 live release Tonight, Not Again.

The album tided his fans over until July 2005, when the songwriter returned with the sophomore studio effort Mr. A-Z. Mraz's popularity reached a new high in 2008 with the release of We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, which peaked at number three and spawned his first chart-topping single, "I'm Yours." The concert album, Jason Mraz's Beautiful Mess: Live on Earth, arrived in 2009, followed by his fourth studio album, Love Is a Four Letter Word, in 2012. In the summer of 2014, Mraz returned with Yes!, which featured backing from the all-female L.A. folk-rock outfit Raining Jane; it was preceded by the single "Love Someone."

Biography by Christina Saraceno, Allmusic.com

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Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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Jason Mraz's Waiting for My Rocket to Come is a two-part invention. The first level is that of a young, almost compelling, singer/songwriter. Mraz has a nice voice, perhaps a little too articulated at times, which manages to mostly avoid the histrionic despite a predilection towards show tuney melodic turns. His voice tumbles out on top of folk-reggae rhythms that will probably sound a bit dated with time, but his vocals are filled with enough internal rhythms and rhymes to keep them interesting. Lyrically, Mraz relies on cliché to a certain degree, but does so with an earnestness that allows for believability and an eye for imagery that succeeds often enough to suggest that he knows what he's doing. The second level of Waiting for My Rocket to Come is the production of John Alagía, whose work has enhanced other similar folk-pop fair, including the Dave Matthews Band and O.A.R. His work with Mraz is, at its best, transparent, filling out the songs with subtle and glossy production and instrumentation. Reflections of banjos, organs, mellotrons, lap steels, ukuleles, and others peak out through the shine of the tunes, creating an impact too rich to be written off as lite.

Review by Jesse Jarnow, Allmusic.com

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Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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In case you didn't catch the pun in the title of Jason Mraz's sophomore album, Mr. A-Z, the perpetually sophomoric singer/songwriter repeats it in the chorus of "Wordplay," the first single from this follow-up to his hit 2002 debut, Waiting for My Rocket to Come. It's a play on his last name, which is appropriate, because Jason Mraz is primarily concerned with two things: himself and sex. But even when he's talking about the latter, he fits the former into the equation – "I've been working on getting you off, so get on board," for instance – because he does consider himself to be quite a compelling presence. After all, he's "been a new sensation," as he declares on "Wordplay," which is likely the first single to ever be about an artist planning to beat the sophomore slump by having a hit with the very tune you're currently hearing. In this song, Mr. A-Z himself claims that "it's all about the wordplay" because "I am the wizard of oohs." Now if Mr. Wizard was really all about the wordplay – that is, all about rhyming games and clever juxtapositions – he would realize that his self-anointed title doesn't sound like "The Wizard of Oz" (and no amount of musical quotations from the film's theme song will change that), it sounds like he's the "wizard of ooze." That's a far cry from "Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches," to randomly pick an example from Elvis Costello, a songwriter who truly does relish playing with words (and was more of an outsider than this self-proclaimed "geek"), but his awkward wordplay does fit, because Mraz does come across like the Wizard of Ooze. Even when he's trying to be romantic he inadvertently gets sleazy, whether it's on the mock-operatic crooning that closes "Mr. Curiosity" or how "damn" is softly cooed in the chorus of the absurd "Plane," where he takes consolation that even if his flight crashes, he'll at least be able to see his lover's house from here. Not exactly romantic mood music, but Mraz prefers matters of the flesh anyway, rapidly spitting out lyrics about hooking up, such as "I can taste you all over my face," that make Dave Matthews' "hike up your skirt a little more" seem classy. Of course, Mraz's loose-limbed, litely funky, litely jazzy pop recalls Matthews and all of the post-Aware Records singer/songwriters who followed in his wake, but Mraz stands apart from the pack in how he's absolutely smitten with his ability to make words come out of his mouth. He loves to have his words spiral up and down on a cascade of moon/June/spoon rhymes and repetition. He loves to have them spill out uncontrollably, cramming as many words into a phrase as possible, unless he's diving for that dirty joke, as he does on "Geek in the Pink" (which has a bad single entendre title in the first place), when he stretches out "I can save you from unoriginal dum-dums/Who would care if you come…plete him or not" – a move that isn't nearly as funny as Tim Curry's Frank N Furter's prolonged delivery of "anticipation" in "Sweet Transvestite," and not delivered with nearly as much lip-smacking zeal, either. That's because Mraz, ironically enough for a guy who specializes in music designed for college parties, doesn't have much of an inclusive vibe to his music; he's so into himself and what he can do that he doesn't bother to invite anybody else along for the ride. All of these traits were apparent on Waiting for My Rocket to Come, but with a little success underneath his belt, Mraz is content to indulge himself to his heart's content on Mr. A-Z, constructing songs that ride a groove with the sole purpose of giving himself a place to sing and kind of rap about the glories of himself, or to make juvenile jokes. For those who enjoyed the wise-ass undercurrent of his debut, this will be a delight. For those who enjoyed "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)," there will be too much narcissistic tomfoolery here to make this enjoyable. For those who never understood the appeal of Jason Mraz in the first place, Mr. A-Z will make them realize that they've really been taking John Mayer for granted.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Jason Mraz - Studio Albums Collection 2002-2008 (3CD) [Re-Up]

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Obsessed with carnality as he is, it was only a matter of time before Jason Mraz realized that it's better to sound sexy than to blather about it incessantly. This monumental moment arrives on his third album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, easily his sleekest collection of sounds and his only album to contain a suggestion of seduction within its grooves. Actually, We Sing is Mraz's only album to actually groove, as he sets down his acoustic guitar for much of the album and rides along on smooth rhythms partially indebted to '80s blue-eyed soul by Hall & Oates and Steve Winwood – in that sense, the album recalls John Mayer's Continuum – but he relies more heavily on Thriller, mixing it up with some modern neo-soul that gives this a surprisingly soulful sound. Mraz can glide on these surfaces, leaning on the gentle art of insinuation instead of goosing his paramour, but old habits die hard: it's only a matter of time before he punctures the seduction by scatting sophomorically, slipping in juvenile come-ons ("You make my slacks tight"), or stuttering manic syncopations on "The Dynamo of Volition." Mraz is also prone to terminal cuteness, drafting in a kids chorus to close out the coda of "Coyotes" and mewling out phrases like "always a goody doer," and while these are often so close-miked and forthright they're hard to ignore, they're also just not as prevalent as they were on the icky Mr. A-Z. Also, they're cleverly camouflaged beneath that gossamer gloss, typified by the quite catchy "Butterfly," whose Quincy Jones-styled horns disguise his mildly queasy oral sex puns. Mraz's lyrics don't stand up to such close scrutiny – something the McCartney-esque, perhaps autobiographical divorce ballad "Love for a Child" ("Was it my mom who put dad out on his ass/Or the other way around") makes plain – but the nice thing about the soulful shimmer of We Sing is that it's so slick that it's easy to ignore the gibberish spilling out of Mraz's mouth and just enjoy the sunny, easy sound.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com