If you plan to holiday in Phuket, Bali or Tioman, where you can laze around chugging piña coladas all day, Jason Mraz’s latest breezy pop disc, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things, would make a decent soundtrack to your jealousy-inducing vacation.

The San Diego-based singer-songwriter’s third studio album – completing the trifecta that started with sappy-happy Waiting for My Rocket to Come (2002) and Mr A-Z (2005) – has two distinctive sounds. Acoustic guitar lays the foundation for ‘I’m Yours’ (the first single with solid hit potential) and ‘Live High’, tracks that hark back to Mraz’s Hawaiian-style cover of Modern English’s ‘Melt With You’ featured in 2004’s Adam Sandler rom-com, 50 First Dates. Meanwhile, the rest of the album features big-production, uptempo songs – skip to jazz-lite ‘Make It Mine’ and ‘Dynamo of Volition’ – that allude to the side of Mraz’s career that includes a Grammy nomination for production on Mr A-Z and collaborations with The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. In other words, this kid still means business. Also worth noting are a couple guest appearances on this album: one by British soft rocker James Morrison in a surprisingly intricate ‘Details in Fabric’, and Mraz’s, um, romantic duet with the latest bubblegum queen, singer/songwriter Colbie Caillat, on ‘Lucky’.

We Sing is indeed a better-than-average album – Mraz has improved his songwriting skills by tempering the annoyingly self-indulgent lyrics (though his website is still wanting, as his voice emanates from it like God, ‘welcoming you to his home…page’). Alas, it seems this Virginia native didn’t challenge himself that much, sticking to formulaic, often über-positive pop tunes, a trademark since his days as a ‘curbside prophet’.