Artist Profile: Willy Mason
Willy Mason is a native of Martha’s Vineyard, which is more or less my favorite place in the world and the place I’ve spent my last ten summers, and his sparse and honest lo-fi folk songs perfectly capture the laid-back atmosphere of the island. However, despite his rural American upbringing, it was in the UK that he got his big break, signing to Virgin and selling over 100,000 copies of his excellent debut LP, Where The Humans Eat, in the UK alone. Last year Humans saw a domestic release after Conor Oberst snatched Mason up and signed him to his upstart Team Love label. The most recent development in Mason’s saga is his jump to Astralwerks, who signed him away from Team Love and then re-released Humans early last month with additional content including the wonderful video for “Oxygen”.
Speaking of “Oxygen”, it is the centerpiece of Humans and his highest-charting single to date (reaching #23 in the UK), and it’s a lyrical masterpiece in which Mason offers an insightful and brilliantly-delivered critique of American society and the world today, touching on everything from the over-diagnosis of ADD in America (”I wanna be better than ridalin for all the kids who think that they have a diseas” to our nation’s materialism and the dominance of big business (”we can be bigger than industry as long as we know there are things that we don’t really need”). “Oxygen” is an absolutely remarkable song from the perspective of an as-yet-unjaded youth, a call to arms to the youth of today to wake up, start caring, and take action. The video is absolutely amazing as well, but I’ll leave my gushing praise for it for the Videoteque post that compiles Mason’s videography and can be seen here. “So Long”, the album’s second single, is a much more upbeat, almost honky-tonk, Ryan Adams-esque folk romp, in which Mason’s sings of his longing for home from his surrogate home in Europe. The entire album is wonderful though, a remarkable feat for someone so young, as Mason is fresh out of highschool and was only 19 years of age when he recorded the record. He’s even received comparisons to Leonard Cohen, one of our greatest living songwriters, an astonishing feat for a songwriter so young, and while those comparisons might be putting too much pressure on a songwriter whose not even of legal drinking age, there’s no denying his potential and bright future.
Mason sounds as if he’s spent too many nights singing in smoke-filled pubs, but this world-weary voice comes from a youth whose only just celebrated his 20th birthday, and his talent is so immense that the always-hyperbolic NME declared that “this youth is about to inherit the world”. However, with a debut album as strong as Where The Humans Eat, and the recent news that Radiohead (RADIOHEAD!!!) hand-picked him to open for their entire upcoming European tour, that prediction might not be far off.
MP3s:
“Oxygen” - Willy Mason [highly recommended]
“So Long” - Willy Mason
“Hard Hand To Hold” - Willy Mason
Also, please make sure to check out his wonderful music videos over on Videoteque here. They’re directed by Tim Laursen and Emily Wilder, fellow Vineyarders who together make up the Wilder/Laursen production company, and all of them, especially the amazing clip for “Oxygen”, are well worth your time and hard drive space.