Without being lush Willy Mason’s third album, Carry On, sounds much more mediated than his earlier releases. This could the influence of British producer Dan Carey, whose recent credits include Chairlift, Bat For Lashes and M.I.A. The wide deployment of mechanical drums and subtle inclusion of keyboard overdubs are a novel enlargement of Mason’s palate. What stands out most of all, though, is an increased confidence, which has enabled Mason to inject more of himself into this record. There’s craft and delicacy in the songs’ refined lyrical sentiments and poised arrangements.
Record centre-piece Restless Fugitive implements a sombre traditional-folk melody, while the pulse of the song gives it a contemporary immediacy. Mason’s spacious vocal delivery and corresponding guitar lines suggest both empathy and a touch of pathos. A festering tension is created by insistent bass playing and distorted guitar outbreaks; a reflection that rambling restlessness may lead to something grave.
There are moments when the time and place of recording is surpassed by the visions of suffering and shared consolation that are evoked. Questions of how to find a home or a sense of belonging in the confusing world recur throughout Carry On. Home seems elusive on Show Me the Way To Go Home, as he confesses “Sometimes I laugh at things I don’t find funny/And I want to find a way to go home” while on Restless Fugitive he surmises “heaven’s in the town that borne me”, and with Into Tomorrow he does away with regressive nostalgia, gazing ahead, “Just watch and wait until the landscape unfolds into tomorrow”. Ultimately an understanding is reached that sitting confidently in your own skin will provide a home you can take with you, even as you roam far and wide.
Carry On continues Willy Mason’s heretofore incorporation of conventional blues and folk motifs, but he’s managed to re-invigorate the formal structures for his own emotional purpose.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
Best Track: Painted Glass
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: On The Beach NEIL YOUNG, Wild Mountain Nation BLITZEN TRAPPER, Hawk ISOBEL CAMBELL & MARK LANEGAN
In A Word: Resilient
