Journal

Willy Mason - Where The Humans Eat

Posted on March 3rd, 2005, in the evening

I finally got hold of the much-hyped Willy Mason album (Amazon.co.uk) this afternoon. It's sold out again and again at all Durham's music shops for several days.

XFM played 'Hard hand to hold' on fairly regular rotation last year (back in the already frighteningly dim and distant past before I left London for Durham), and Radio 1 have taken up 'Oxygen' with similar frequency. Both are undeniably strong songs.

The whole album is good. Virgin Records' slightly cynical overplaying of 'amateurish and folksy' in the packaging is only a minor distraction (why cheapen good music?). Every idea is mature beyond Willy's 20 years. The execution doesn't always quite come up to the quality of the ideas, but hey, the guy is 20!

With a whole album the intelligent songwriting stands out less than when one song is set against the morass of radio playlist backdrop, but that's actually testament to the consistent quality rather than a criticism.

This is music you have to actually listen to to fully appreciate. It's still good if you just let it play in the background, but these are songs that say something. I just ache with solidarity along to 'Oxygen'.

I want to live beyond the modern mentality/Where paper is all that you're really taught to create

Does it bear the Dylan comparisons? What an irritating question.

• WillyMason.com - currently an almost comically (and, I think, deliberately) ramshackle affair
• WillyMason.co.uk - a much cleaner UK fan site.