Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

In the time between his 2005 album, Mr. A-Z, and his latest album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, Jason Mraz released a string of EPs, mostly consisting of live material. Despite the three-year waiting period for new material, Mraz hasn't offered much in the way of new here.

The latest album to employ an interesting marketing quirk, Mraz actually released We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things as a trio of EPs. We Sing dropped March 18, followed by We Dance April 15 and finally We Steal Things, which is available with today's album. While it's a bold choice to give fans eight of the album's 12 tracks far in advance of the street date, it's not necessarily a good choice.

While there is a level of cohesiveness in the songs present on We Sing and We Dance, the requisite shuffling and additions to create an album end up creating a very uneven affair and a weak album.

We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things opens with "Make You Mine," the best this sloppy collection of tracks has to offer. The song builds slowly, working in some delightfully brassy horns as the tempo speeds up. Lyrically, the song uses short bursts of phrases, making the already fast track feel like it's racing along.

But while "Make You Mine" succeeds, originality isn't as present on the rest of the album, leading to a string of ho-hum songs that, at best, borrow other musical styles and, at worst, do so poorly.

"I'm Yours" feels like it got to Mraz via Bob Marley by way of Jack Johnson, pairing Marley's reggae sounds with the soft guitar and bouncy rhythm of Johnson's. Aside from the sections of scat singing, which are painful enough, the track feels like a blatant rip-off.

Someone needs to break the news to Mraz: We already have one Jack Johnson, and he provides more than enough flip-flop, beach-ball music for us all. If you're going to steal someone's sound, at least do it well - this track would have found the cutting room floor during any of Johnson's recording sessions, and it should have done the same for you. Thankfully, the album's not all like "I'm Yours," in that it's not all faux beach-ey music, but unfortunately, much of it is equally bad.

"Coyotes" is a mish-mash of overproduced electronic sounds and speed-sung lyrics - think Justin Timberlake, but instead of an overflow of awesome, an overflow of junk. Those speed-sung lyrics are mostly whispered, except for the chorus, which is inexplicably belted out and followed with samples of an opera.

What ultimately drags We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things is the all-over-the-map sense of style. There's no overwhelming cohesiveness here, perhaps the reason behind the three-staged EP release.

There are certainly some good songs on this album, but they are spaced too far apart to do anything for this collection. A handful of good tracks compiled with a mass of filler does not a good album make, even if it can be used to create some decent EPs.

tripp.laino@yahoo.com

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

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