Willy Mason "Where the Humans Eat" (Astralwerks)
By
Friday. Mar 31, 12:10 AM
Charming young 'un who, despite certain redeeming qualities, lacks aging's valuable lessons.

I want to like Willy Mason. I really do. Here is a 21-year-old kid remarkably in tune with his artistry: writing good, precocious songs, playing and singing them with honesty and gravity, and doing it all without frills and without gimmicks. His sleepy, stumbly baritone is instantly charming, complementing the folky, raw acoustic sound of his music almost perfectly. He’s got an attitude. And his new record Where the Humans Eat was recorded mostly at home with his brother and a handful of friends. These are all things I look for in a musician and his or her music.

After several spins over the past two weeks, Mason has yet to reach in and grab hold like I thought he would the first time I heard Where the Humans Eat. He can sing. He plays groovy, bluesy acoustic guitar. But as I paid closer attention, I realized that the reason I couldn’t say “I really like this album” had something to do with the fact that critics filled with enthusiasm for Mason’s songs make unreserved comparisons to the likes of John Prine, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan. These comparisons seemed valid as the catchy yet listless one-two punch of the record’s first two tracks (the foot-stomper “Gotta Keep Movin” and the glum “All You Can Do,” which has an infectious riff) came sauntering out of the box the first few times around.

It’s clear that Mason possesses a budding talent as a singer and a songwriter, and it’s clear that he has a profound appreciation for the post-modern troubadours that defined American folk music for earlier generations. But as catchy and cynically intellectual as Mason may be, he doesn’t live up to the comparisons. And the more one hears Where the Humans Eat, the more one realizes that Mason is trying really hard to do just that, which makes it less and less enjoyable as the record wears on.

Of course, there are few musicians out there that could even come close to living up to such lofty compliments as these. Mason does his best, but unlike in earlier generations, it is difficult to take seriously a guy with a guitar who wants to be a revolutionary in an America that sees revolution every day; his cynicism may be real, but can it be valid in an idealist who sings about “the forgotten America, justice, equality, freedom to every race?” Will listeners be shocked into enlightenment after hearing over 50 years of other musicians deride government and television and makeup and anti-depressants? Can one channel Prine without the humor, Cash without the outlaw mentality, Dylan without the mystique?

Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is “no.” Or at least “probably not.” Mason is an artist with great potential who may have made his first record a little too early. The fusion of the folk aesthetic with the punk ethic just doesn’t ring true coming from this kid who is out to save the world. And that’s where Mason falls short: the revolution he sings about reached its crescendo long ago and fizzled out without actually taking place, leaving this crooning, smug grandson of real hippies and punks looking kind of, well, unnecessary. For all his chops and skills, he ends up coming across as a sort of spoiled, sort of smart kid, with his heart in the right place but his head lost in a glorified, idealized past.

Kris Kristofferson once said of a young, undiscovered John Prine: “24 years-old and writes like he’s 220.” Mason is a 21-year-old who writes like a 21-year-old: he can write, he can play, he can sing, but he lacks the wisdom that makes American folk music more than pretty little ditties. A few years of heartbreak and destitution would do him – and his music – a world of good.
www.willymason.com
www.astralwerks.com

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Jason Bronson

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