If our generation is searching for a musical voice today there is good news for some but not for all.
The emergence of Willy Mason and the release of his new album “Where the humans eat” today, some will find the voice they seek with his fiercely political message that has a mostly pleasing musical package.
The music is part rock, part bluegrass, part country and all indie rock of the purest variety. Along with the usual guitar, bass and drums the album also heavily features a violin and a mandolin to round out an otherwise hollow and predictable sound.
His voice had depth with its touch of hoarseness but still with a significant power to it. It is mostly expressive but at times drones on.
The lyrics on the album are the strongest aspect with their political messages that don’t waste time on euphemisms. The best example is track 9, Our town. The song starts out right away and doesn’t quit.
“Is that a guitar or a machinegun /Don’t make me take it away /You know I think you are a bad one” and continues on with “Time to move you to the big cell/ Your all in this together now /This is where the really big deals go down /Just like the street behind the White House.”
This type of overt protest song has been missing from the music scene in recent years. It is refreshing to hear our generation work on this old art form and in Mason’s case succeed.
However, Mason is multi-dimensional and has something to say about a whole range on subjects like in track 11, oxygen, where he covers things from children who watch to much television to kids who are overmedicated to and finishes off expressing his dislike for the hypocrisy in our lives.
“I wanna hold up my head with dignity/ Proud of a life where to give means more than to take/ I wan’t to live beyond the modern mentality/ Where paper is all that you’re really taught to create/ Do you remember the forgotten America?/ Justice, equality, freedom to every race?/Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy.” Mason obviously has no trouble expressing himself or forming an opinion.
While the lyrics have something to say the music is not quite so inspired. While it is solid and works hard to be something different half the time it fails.
When it succeeds, it really succeeds. Like in track 5, Fear no pain, where the melody is upbeat and plucky, with a grooby quality at odds with the lyrics but it works. But a lot of it seems like uninspired albeit, well played, music
The comparisons to Bob Dylan will inevitably be made with his scruffy voice and lyrics that are part poetry and part hardhitting political rhetoric. But that would take away from Mason’s own talent, and truly only time will tell if he can last like Dylan.
The only thing that is for certain is that whether you agree or disagree Mason has something to say and he doesn’t waste time mincing words. Here his message when he plays the Bluebird Theatre at an all ages show on March 10.
