Like The Killers, Kings of Leon and The Strokes, Willy Mason is an American who became popular in the early 2000s in the UK before anywhere else. His first two albums reached the top 40 here but unlike those bands, he didn’t expand that adoration into wider success and it’s now almost a decade since he last released a solo recording. The text that accompanies this fourth album says that in the meantime he’s been “playing R&B and early rock’n’roll as rhythm guitarist in his local dive bar house band” on the Massachusetts island Martha’s Vineyard.
However, his slacker charm and idealistic outlook never suggested he was the type for chasing global fame. His debut album, Where the Humans Eat, contained a song about his cats, and his biggest song, Oxygen, was full of wide-eyed optimism: “We can be stronger than bombs if you’re singing along and you know that you really believe.”
In 2021, the picture is understandably darker. “Oh brother, oh sister, be careful what you believe,” he sings on Gilded Lie. Now the way that he separates himself from the woes of the world sounds more sombre: “You can’t kill me, I’m already dead,” goes a chorus which is less melodic than the verse on the title track.
His sound can still sit neatly next to the folkier side of Beck, with that oaky voice and ramshackle production that’s particularly loose on the clanking punk of One of the Good Ones. In a very different world it’s nice to have him back.
