“We still are hiding from reality,” Willy Mason sings on his forthcoming album’s first single, Save Myself. Now Willy Mason isn’t one to hide from reality. In fact, a year ago or so, reality knocked him down so hard, that he had to cancel his tour and retreat to his parent’s house on Martha’s Vineyard to steer his ship safe into the harbour again. If The Ocean Gets Rough is the appropriate title of his new album, and I’ll give it away right here (so you won’t have to read the entire review, but go to the record store directly): it’s a goddamned masterpiece.

Willy Mason’s first solo album Where The Humans Eat was released in 2004, when he was only nineteen years old. It was an honest, free-spirited album by a young man trying to be a messenger of youth and its ideals. He was an adolescent singing songs about all the clichés (love, hope and redemption) without resorting to clichés all the time. The music was simple – three chords, easy progression, and his kid brother fulfilling the drummer duties. Lyrically, Willy wasn’t afraid to use big words, but his involvement with the world was real – which gave the album authenticity. He wasn’t Shakira – working for world peace while doing Pepsi commercials – but he wasn’t Bill Hicks yet either. Willy Mason was still looking for his own style, but already there were some signs of that voice, of a warm detachment, of a describing instead of a prescribing.

With If The Ocean Gets Rough, Mason has grown into his own. The singer songwriter of If The Ocean Gets Rough is more world-wise (perhaps even –weary), more distant, and darker. He’s pulling the punches and pushing the river: “We can be strong,” he sings on the song of the same name, helped out by a beautiful second voice, but there’s an underlying notion here that’s it not all that simple. The songs are literate, and Mason’s voice takes the words into their own world, a dreamy, compelling one – a world of youth and young manhood – and a world entirely his own. A world full of shrewd observations dressed up as lyrical hooks. A world full of wonder. And a world full of woe. In short, a world like ours – a world to explore.

A lot of the songs on the album seem to be about Willy’s darker days (“Now I’m back on mamma’s couch / plenty of time to think about / all of the kids that went the college route / chasing their tomorrows… One by one my friends dropped out / now I got brothers to share my doubts / On what this business is is really about / waiting on tomorrow / waiting on tomorrow” from: We Can Be Strong). The sounds and style of the album are more or less the same as before, although a wider palette of instruments has been used (think strings, electric guitars, banjos and female backings). However, whatever the musical progression, the compositions still seem to be the backdrop for Willy Mason’s reports on modern life – reports instead of remedies. Reports on the desolate state of all affairs.

But make no mistake: If The Ocean Gets Rough is not an album of dashed hope. It’s an album saying “when the ocean gets rough, gather the crew, and ride out that storm with all you got. Then, if necessary, go back into the harbour, fix those sails and rig those lines. And after that? Get out again. Why? Because you’re a goddamn captain, that’s why!” And there’s nothing that beats that feeling of the sun on your face, riding those waves now, is there? So, no matter how many times you fall, trip or stumble, ante up again.

In the end, If The Ocean Gets Rough is an album of hope. It’s an inspired record by a singer songwriter with his own distinct world vision. Like Josh Ritter and Will Oldham, Willy Mason is a reporter of our world – both inner and outer.

And he’s a mighty reporter indeed.

Release date: 05/03/07
Artist website: www.willymason.com
Label: Virgin

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