Willy Mason - If The Ocean Gets Rough (2007)

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Willy Mason - If The Ocean Gets Rough (2007)

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With a sound that recalls Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash along with the cynicism of grunge and punk, nobody could believe wry singer/songwriter Willy Mason was only 19 when he appeared on the indie scene. Born and raised on Martha's Vineyard, Mason grew up with his parents' love of folk music. He loved it, too, but his teen years brought Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine into his life. Mason found their political and social messages much easier to identify with and soon combined folk's softer and loose delivery with the revolutionary attitude of his new heroes. Writing came easy now and the teenager had plenty of self-penned material ready when a family friend asked Mason to appear on his local radio show. As luck would have it, Sean Foley – an associate of Conor Oberst and his band, Bright Eyes – was driving through Cape Cod as Mason was on the air. Foley was captivated by Mason's song "Oxygen" and left his phone number at the radio station, setting off a chain of events that would have Oberst and Mason hanging out, doing gigs together, and touring America. With only three people in the audience, a gig at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX, seemed a disaster until one of the three introduced himself as BBC DJ Zane Lowe. Lowe was also captivated by "Oxygen" and added it to his playlist when it appeared on Mason's debut, Where the Humans Eat, released by Team Love in 2004. Critics were positive about the album and unanimously shocked that the literate writer and performer of these songs was only 19. Tours with Rosanne Cash, My Morning Jacket, Evan Dando, Beth Orton, and labelmates Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins increased the fan base and influenced the Astralwerks label to pick up the debut. Astralwerks reissued Where the Humans Eat in early 2006 with bonus tracks and videos added to the original album. That same year Mason assembled a band that included Nina Violet and cousin Zak Borden, and in 2007 his sophomore record, If the Ocean Gets Rough, came out.

Willy Mason managed to impress a lot of people before his debut album, Where the Humans Eat, came out in 2004. His earnestness, his clear love of American folk music, and his warm melodies won him fans among other artists as well as among the general public. His sophomore album, If the Ocean Gets Rough, shows these same characteristics, but it also shows him at a point where his flaws can't be as easily brushed off, or blamed on his youth. Not that there are many mistakes here: Mason is an impressive songwriter, able to construct mature pieces that have a sense of familiarity but still sound new and unique. "We Can Be Strong" sets itself around a bluesy bass-and-piano romp, but it also incorporates elements of pop in its harmonies and acoustic guitars, with Mason singing about trying to find himself as an adult. It's clearly a topic he's familiar with, and so it comes across as honest and realistic, and makes the track a standout. The same can be said about "When the River Moves On." He's clearly influenced by old-timey music but he doesn't feel he has to adhere completely to it, which allows him room to modernize it in a way that makes it very much his own, and so when he sings "My friends have all gone traveling/And there's panic on TV" over a Deep South-inspired blues line, the contemporary and the past fuse together cleanly and skillfully. It's when Mason tries to reach far beyond his own experiences that things start to seem a bit forced, like the clichéd "The World I Wanted" or "When the Leaves Have Fallen." But even these slight blemishes don't disfigure the overall beauty of If the Ocean Gets Rough, mostly thanks to Mason's compelling voice. With the lazy weariness of Tom Waits and the inflection of John Lennon, Mason makes every line he sings something worth listening to, something worth remembering. And when this is coupled with songs that can already stand strongly on their own, it makes for a pretty commanding album.