Willy Mason - 'If The Ocean Gets Rough' (Virgin) Released 05/03/07

When, in the latter stages of 2004 Willy Mason’s ‘Oxygen’ and Arcade Fire’s ‘Funeral’ were released within weeks of each other, many music lovers, including this reviewer, realised that the line between great music and utterly life-changing music still existed. Beyond any glib conclusions and five-star ratings, here were records that crystallised the moment you first heard them, creating the unshakeable feeling that you were in the presence of greatness. At the age of just 18 Mason had articulated an idealistic yet demoralizing vision of the world he’d like to live in (“We can be stronger than bombs/If you’re singing along/And you know that you really believe”), as all around him existed the detritus of war, global warming and affronts on international law and liberty. The juxtaposition between his yearning and the reality would have been funny were it not so depressing.

A sense of overwhelming resignation runs throughout ‘If The Ocean Gets Rough’. Still only 21, Willy Mason already sounds so world-weary and troubled that if his songs weren’t so delicately affecting we’d be regularly haranguing him for playing the stereotypically nomadic folkie.

Though the faint orchestration in the background of opener ‘Gotta Keep Walking’ is an immediate departure from the off-the-cuff bedroom recordings that characterised ‘Where The Humans Eat’, when Mason sings “All the other troops marched towards the bomb/But I wandered off” it’s clear that Willy is out once again to engage with the world. At the opposite end ‘The World That I Wanted’ recalls early-Dylan (a familiar reference for Mr. Mason) in its simplicity and eulogy for a dead father, while single ‘Save Myself’ features an unashamedly pop arrangement as cover for lyrics that speak of dis-engagement, and of worrying more about your own life than any global buzz issues.

After the Beatles-esque sweetness of ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘If The Ocean…’ starts to suffer from the law of diminishing returns, and sounds under-developed, though the funereal march of ‘Simple Town’ is suitably murky, while ‘The End Of The Race’ reveals its charms once you stop worrying and learn to love Mason’s cracked, battle-scarred vocals. A flawed record then, one whose first half is immeasurably better than its second, yet an unpolished gem of alternative songwriting and sentiments.

So there’s nothing here that is as good as ‘Oxygen’. But then this is a different album for a different time. Three years on and everything is so much worse on so many levels that the natural tendency is to forget ideas of collectivism and, overwhelmed by the scale of the problems, retreat into a ball of apathy and self-interest. This is the context in which ‘If The Ocean Gets Rough’ should be heard. Mason is certain to make better albums in the years to come, but whether they’ll ring as true to the international zeitgeist as this frequently does is debatable.
The protest singer is dead! Long live the protest singer!