Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Most Popular

  • Dive Bars
    A handcrafted tour of the best, most obscure places to lean on a stool in Houston.
  • Getting Off
    Attorney Tyler Flood says he wins 80 percent of his clients' DWI trials, even if they were 100 percent drunk as a skunk.
  • Houston's Choice for Mayor
    Black Guy, Rich White Guy, Lesbian or Hispanic Republican
  • Burgers and Hash
    Lola, a modern diner in the Heights is dishing up some top-notch Texas short-order cooking.
  • Looking for a Bull Market
    Killen's Steakhouse in suburban Pearland is probably best during boom times.
Most Popular sponsored by

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of Houston's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & Houston Press

National Features >

  • Village Voice

    The Great Walls of Chinatown

    With the exception of the electric rice cookers, this Bowery tenement could have come straight from the Nineteenth Century.

    By Elizabeth Dwoskin

  • Miami New Times

    Park or Die Tryin'

    From the homeless parking mafia to the meter fairy, finding a spot in Miami has taken a turn toward the surreal.

    By Gus Garcia-Roberts

  • City Pages

    The Baddest Men on the Planet

    Straight from the Sam's Club tire shop, Brett Rogers prepares to meet Fedor Emelianenko in mortal combat.

    By Bradley Campbell

Jack's Mannequin

Share

  • rss

By Zaleski, Anne

Published on October 14, 2008 at 3:32pm

On Jack's Mannequin's optimistic new single "The Resolution," vocalist/pianist/songwriter Andrew McMahon sings, "I'm alive, but I don't need a witness, to know that I survived." The 26-year-old could just as easily be referencing the fact that he's transcended his teenage band (piano-punks Something Corporate) as he is that the cancer that threatened to derail his career is in remission. But The Glass Passenger, JM's eagerly awaited — and long-in-the-making — follow-up to 2005 debut Everything in Transit, is by no means fixated on his sickness. "Swim" is a slower, uplifting piano ballad — a lazy, hazy day twirling on a swing set — while the brisker "Suicide Blonde" has a muscular, fuller-band sound with echoes of '70s glam swagger and jaunty Britpop bounce. The rest of the hook-happy Passenger floats by on lushly orchestrated atmospheres, with an emphasis on the shadier side of sunny California pop (Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac) and classic-rock kingpins (Tom Petty, The Who). All of these influences emerge even more live: With a full band behind him, the spidery McMahon scurries out from behind — if not climbs on — his piano, and frequently breaks out covers such as Petty's "American Girl" or Springsteen's "I'm on Fire."