When my daughter was about three years old, she’d greet the latest music on the lounge room stereo with a mixture of excitement and suspicion: knowing that the forceful prod of any button would alter, or perhaps conclude, the music on offer, she’d walk over to the stereo and, upon reaching the end of her patience, whack the stereo. On one occasion – the playing of Brian Wilson’s Smile album – Babette took her usual position and then, transfixed by the beauty of Wilson’s pop melodies, stood there and listened. In that single moment could be seen Brian Wilson’s pop genius.
Ben Mason isn’t a tortured soul like Brian Wilson, yet he creates music that has a pop sensibility that verges on mesmerising. Holes and Corners is Mason’s first record after the demise of The Smallgoods. It’s a pop record with everything you want in a pop record; delicious harmonies, delicate melodies, narratives of adolescence when life was simple, a bit confusing and ephemeral in its juvenile excitement.
The breathy Avoiding A Fight is the soundtrack for a journey through the night of emotional confusion; Black Sky Yellow Moon contrasts the despair of disappointment with the promise of hope. Breaking Up Breaking Down takes the perpetual frustration of estrangement and wraps it up in early 70s Californian innocence; Blind and Stupidity is sweet and slick, a tale of regret for something that may never have been real, but was always there anyway. I Can See Again takes a stroll on the beach in the early morning and wonders what happiness may be coming; Never is heavy, in a pop way. Easy captures the very essence of adolescent love and its pretended perennial existence; Word for Word is tender, reassuring and comforting. As, indeed, is this entire record. Pop music has rarely sounded so good.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Avoiding a Fight
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: THE BEACH BOYS, THE SMALLGOODS and anything with decent pop sensibility
In A Word: pop
