Jack Johnson releases his new album "All the Light In a higher place Information technology Too" Sept. 8 through Brushfire Records. Photograph COURTESY WIKIMEDIA Commons

Laidback and dreamy Jack Johnson recaptured hearts with "All the Light Above it Too," released last Friday. Known for his audio-visual skills and wholesome lyrics, Johnson reinforces his staple features, mixed with some surprise in the 10-rail anthology.

Opening with the song "Subplots," Johnson draws the listener in with the familiar isle-sounding bright acoustics and soft chorus. Nonetheless, this vocal is definitely a favorite on the album not because of the predictability, merely the depth of the lyrics.

"Which part of yourself can you afford to lose?" he questions to the listener, who is fraught with the multitude of "subplots" in their life. He makes the listener question their priorities in life, and he offers solace in his simplicity. Coupled with the hopefully whimsical chords, the vocal is an immediate choice-me-up.

Johnson also introduces the anthology'southward championship in "Subplots," singing, "All the light under the sunday / All the lite to a higher place it too / Is gonna rise and shine / Information technology don't polish for you."

This might seem a fiddling discouraging, but he presents a choice: choose a lone path of worry, or choose to come across the light in all our lives that connects us, even in worry.

Johnson continues in his album with a beautiful blending between songs, and makes sure to keep his traditional sound. It'due south toe-tapping, rainy day, café music that you lot can work or even fall asleep to.

"Sunsets for Somebody Else," sounds familiar to Johnson'due south popular song "Banana Pancakes" from his 2005 album "In Between Dreams." This new song is its complement, a wind downwardly to go to slumber with a lover, and "Banana Pancakes" a gentle wakeup. Both of them together is the perfect ending and start to a 24-hour interval.

Nonetheless, Johnson experiments with much more than his soft rock and acoustic influences in this album.

Most notably, the vocal "Gather" has a harder indie stone vibe that most sounds like a tribal dance. Its heavy employ of percussion and woodwinds is strange for Johnson. Lucifer that with the ambiguous lyrics, "And others gonna take to kill /  With everybody so preoccupied / Who'southward gonna pay the bills?"

It sounds similar Johnson is defining roles played by people in a social club, those with duties and those who "take it as well far." However, it is definitely a foreign departure from the happy-get-lucky Johnson we all know, both lyrically and musically. It breaks the coherence of the anthology and is more unsettling than anything.

Another experiment for Johnson is "Love Vocal #16," which features a heavy apply of staccato sounds and electric guitar, a shock from the carefully blended songs earlier information technology. The lyrics long for by memories, but also describes occasional hardships in life. Yet, in true Johnson style, the vocal ends with rejoicing in life's simple pleasures and finding love.

Following this trend and playing on Johnson'due south "Curious George" phase, "My Mind Is For Sale" feels like a childhood vocal with its excitably jumpy rhythm and instruments.

Notwithstanding, the lyrics are a social critique of the division between u.s.a. versus them. The combination of the basic music and deep lyrics hitting dwelling in unexpected ways, because it's piece of cake to listen to and acquire what he'southward trying to convey.

Johnson flits with location and his upbringing too, with "Big Sur." The isle influences from his babyhood in the North Shore of Oahu can exist heard in the way the guitar is played.

The lines, "Behind the wheel against the road … The central thought within my heed / Is how to stay within these lines," gives a chuckle to anyone who has dared drive on Highway I. The song feels like summertime.

The stop of this anthology features a song, titled "Fragments," from the picture "The Smog of the Ocean," in which Johnson takes part in a one-week journey through remote waters searching out the impact of abandoned plastics in the oceans. "Fragments" frames the story of the journey that he took with scientists, analyzing the adverse furnishings of even the tiniest particle of plastic.

"Why can't we relate?" he asks. "With ourselves with what we open / Up when information technology's too tardily." He asks the listener to take responsibility with the damage plastics do to the Earth, before we can't do anything virtually information technology.