Boys Outside - Steve Mason

Track list:

1. Understand My Heart
2. Am I Just a Man
3. The Letter
4. Yesterday
5. Lost & Found
6. I Let Her In
7. Stress Position
8. All Come Down
9. Boys Outside
10. Hound on My Heel

Running time: 40 minutes
Released: 2010

Blimey, is this really 6 years old? Time flies. I really liked this album when it was released but have listened to it a lot less frequently of late. Looking forward to this one.

Mason's multiple personalities have surfaced before on this blog (see Black Gold), but this effort apparently followed a serious depressive episode, which might be one of the reasons I connected with it. It has many, many echoes of The Beta Band, ditches the hardest edges of electro from Black Affair, and instead crafts very approachable songs. Am I Just a Man is a pretty perfect example of this - radio friendly rhythm, poppy tones, but with a darkness lurking in the bass. It fades in influence compared to the rather uplifting vocal and the overall message of the song is a pretty positive one despite the topic. Its a song I identify with on a couple of levels.

I missed out on doing this yesterday - time vanished on me - and somehow I have lost an hour or so this morning too. My week off is almost over, just the regular weekend to go now. The Letter continues the dark and light theme. This drops the electronica for percussion and strings and a more subdued tone. The vocal is muted, regretful, with a crescendo of support in the chorus. Its a break up song, and could be accused of being a little bit mopey except for the strings which impart a roundness to the sound that suggests that its not being seen as the end of the world. I have always liked a little dark undertone, particularly when it has something to contrast. The first four tracks all see Mason's vocal as insubstantial, soft and floating over the soundscapes he has created for them. They feel light in contrast to the lurking threats implicit in the construction of that support. The light mostly wins out. Yesterday is the weakest track so far, the blocky nature of the call/response in the composition feeling a bit... tacky.

Lost & Found was always a favourite, though I never clocked just quite how black the lyrics were. Blackness is everywhere here - from the album art which had no identifying content (I seem to recall that the back of the jewel case was similarly plain, but white) to the themes to the monsters lurking in threatening aural space. Again the chorus cuts through this though - the keys and that almost ethereal vocal provide a contrast. The light touch on the singing is a high point, exposing a little vulnerability and a voice that has a lived in quality - we'll see later when it is not quite so softly applied, I think.

I Let Her In strips away the percussive base that has supported most of the tracks. A guitar melody - simple and looping - is the only support for that almost disembodied voice until a roiling darkness swirls and rises from beneath in a subtle soundtrack-like way. It works better than I remember. We then hit Stress Position which I recall as the weakest track on the disc. This is back to full electro beat; its just a little dull. I thought Mason's voice was applied more forcefully on this track, and I suppose it has a little more body, a breathiness to the delivery, but not a harder edge which is what I misremembered. Actually the whole track is just toned down from my recollection of it, and it feels a little empty, all over the place and bland as a result.

Ethereal Mason is back for All Come Down, a tune which has an awful lot of empty space, like a gas expanding to fill a container at very low pressure. The composition is very sparse. There's a vocal backing, a medium paced rhythm and, until we hit a crescendo that is about it. When it does rise, there is a harmonic effect, a ringing that seems to help the sound expand more. My ear is not sure which thread to follow even though there aren't that many separate strands here. It feels like the song has built a sphere of noise around me and I am cocooned until the point a long fade-out begins. We then get the title track, which has a nice acoustic guitar riff carrying it, but lyrically it wavers a bit; it seems to be Mason drawing a line between his present and his past - the whole album in a nutshell. I have to say tough that whilst that riff is soft and soothing, the track as a whole is... lacking something.

My favourite track on this disc was always the last one; Hound on My Heel - the title says it all. The pacing of the track, the rhythm, the hushed delivery of the lyrics, the slow build of the support. The contrast in the chorus, the threat in the subject matter. It all hangs together in a way that has an immediate appeal to me. There is darkness here, but it is implicitly behind, not ahead, and the keys which lend the light are the dominant theme by the end.  As it closes, I don't think the album holds up as well as I would have liked, but the strong finish has me smiling at the end anyway. Its not bad at all, just a little flat in places. I have a less visceral connection to it these days too, which probably explains the distancing.

Black Gold - King Biscuit Time

Track list:

1. C I Am 15
2. Izzum
3. Impossible Ride
4. Kwangchow
5. Lefteye
6. All Over You
7. The Way You Walk
8. Paperhead
9. Rising Son
10. Metal Biscuit

Running time: 39 minutes
Released: 2006

What to say about this as an introduction? Start with the obvious, I guess. King Biscuit Time was a moniker used by Steve Mason - I think of all the artists in my library, this guy shows up under more names than anyone else having been with The Beta Band, and also released under his given name and as Black Affair. Talk about an identity crisis?

I remember really loving this a while back - hard to believe it is still less than a decade old actually - and  it only just missed out on selection to go into the wallet of CDs I keep in the car when I last changed up the bundle. However I do wonder if an extra few years may not have been kind to it or its place in my affections. Time to see!

This is my second listen of the day because I am too braindead to do anything else but feel a desire to not play games or watch TV... I am left with music. I toyed with the idea of messing about doing this as an Audiosurf log of the album for kicks but at the end of the day that would mean no comment on the listening itself. I am starting with a digression because the opening track is not really worth anything else. Every bit as weak as I remembered, C I Am 15 is not representative of the rest - or such is my memory. Bland rhythms and a guest rapper are not really what I was buying this disc for and they won't be missed.

Izzum is really where it starts. Pretty simple musically, it is the vocal style that makes it work - fast, peppered lines with barely a breath between them chanted as much as anything. Husky, framed by minimal music but given an ethereal, echoing quality. The sounds that are placed alongside this remain low key, and in contrast. Bass dark, treble rare but very light when it emerges. For what it's worth I'm already glad I didn't include this in the new selection for the car but not because I dislike this piece, its just not good driving music, and the album is on the short side anyway. The final rites of Izzum are a little repetitive, alas not knowing when to end is a very common fault in music. What picks up is a weird spacey sound, again structured so that Mason's voice fills the consciousness. I find it interesting how someone who doesn't really sing much has constructed everything around the vocal, so much so that if you took it away you would wonder what the hell the point of the tune was (as I do because the vocal ends early on in Impossible Ride). It isn't even as if the lyrics are stunning or deep. No, the appeal is all in the charisma with which they are imparted, a warm texture that wraps you up.

If I'm honest, the only reason I was considering Black Gold for the car was because my memory of the next track is so damn good. Kwangchow is electric, vital and so, so shonky. It really isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but I love it to bits. I suspect because it is very much like a misplaced Beta Band track in that it would fit right in on Heroes to Zeroes. Listening now, the track is nothing like as strong as my memory of it would imply but it still has something intangible that makes it just work. Lefteye starts with what sounds like a Western theme, something about the guitar loop that makes you think of dusty savanna and cacti, I guess it is the slightly uneven cadence that speaks to horses hooves. Again the appeal of the track is all in Mason's voice; even if the compositions aren't genius, how they are shaped for his singing really is. The synergy between the rhythms, melodies and vocal is as good as anything I can think of, the voice integrated seamlessly into a cocoon of music that feels empty and unnecessary whenever he is not signing.

I find myself not really remembering these tunes well; it's clearly been a while since I listened to any in earnest. All Over You is, after Kwangchow, perhaps the one I recall most clearly, a low key and simple guitar loop over a basic percussion but it manages to be catchy and affecting at the same time. Again, not a masterpiece by any means but a pretty little break up song nonetheless. This is rattling through, but then it is only a 40 minute album, and I had 2 tracks amount to more than that last week so... The Way You Walk takes until the first verse is delivered before it really kicks in. There is something in the roll of this tune that makes it work. Again here the elements that have been shunted together to produce the track are deceptively simple and the charm is all in the combination, with the chorus being particularly effective. I should detest its love-y dove-y tone and schmaltz but yet somehow I find myself swaying in time as I type. It's funny how things can make us see (or hear) the same thing very differently, eh? If this was anyone else I would run a mile... and yet.

Paperhead is more like the material on Mason's later offering, Boys Outside. That album is better than this one but I wouldn't call this track as effective as the last few... I think because the vocal feels further removed from the music here that at any point since the guest rapper muttered his last on track 1. Its all fairly low key, the brief interjection of a repeating guitar aside, before it ends rather abruptly. I find myself more glad with every minute of every track that I did not waste a wallet slot on this CD but I have little desire to get rid of anything other than C I Am 15 either. Rising Son gives me cause to question that statement as it fails to deliver anything interesting whilst providing what is quite a pleasant little loop to sway gently along with, and then we hit the final track. Metal Biscuit has a more electro sound, and is a short little outro more than anything else but its a bright little finish, upbeat and happy.

So, it's nothing like as good as I remember. Full of tracks that would be dull by anyone else. Made as a vehicle for a singer who doesn't sing much and yet... its also really nice when considering how it sits with Mason's other work. It clearly bridges the Betas to Boys Outside and even hints at the darker themed content of Pleasure Pressure Point in places.