After John Mayer hooked up with producer John Alagia, who had previously worked with Dave Matthews, for his second album, Room for Squares, a lot of people heard him as a second Matthews. But a listen to Mayer's first album, Inside Wants Out, half of which turned up in re-recorded form on Room for Squares, is liable to remind the listener more of an earlier antecedent, 1970s folk-jazz performer Michael Franks of Popsicle Toes fame. Like Franks, Mayer here has a wheezy, phlegmatic tenor and, though he plays an acoustic guitar that is the focus of the arrangements even when a few other instruments are brought in, he does not restrict himself to folk chords, instead throwing in jazzy elements. His material is better when he cuts through the affectations, however. The best songs, neither of which were repeated on Room for Squares, are Love Soon and Comfortable. In the latter, he sings to a former girlfriend about his current one, illuminating how different one love interest can be from another. Life of the