Where the Humans Eat is the debut LP from 19-year-old Willy Mason, out now on Conor Oberst's Team Love imprint. Mason's lo-fi blues/folk blend is refreshingly humble and unostentatious. Instead of using these standards as a springboard for modern adventures in composition, he sticks to their rawboned essence. Unlike some of his peers, Mason doesn't play up that rawness; instead he allows those old progressions to work their magic rather than forcing catharsis. The result is a more immediate, less cerebral album than you'd expect from such a green musician.
Nylon opined that Mason's songwriting is "on par, arguably, with lyrical mastermind Leonard Cohen..." Cough! Cough! Excuse me, I swallowed my gum. Mason does evoke Cohen in lyrical style and vocal timbre, but in skill and substance? Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Nylon; the dude's not even out of his teens and you're comparing him to one of our greatest living songwriters. It's too much pressure. Mason displays admirable insight and humility for a 19-year-old, but this is still a teenager's record. "All You Can Do" is the product of a young man moving to the big city and being struck for the first time by the tragedy of homelessness. "Still a Fly" gets a little lyrically precocious ("But still, you're just a kid, you shouldn't read Dostoevsky at your age"), but displays Mason's charming melody and casual delivery. And the title track's gentle lullaby is belied by its petulant lyrics ("Why don't you listen when I stamp my feet?/ You don't belong where the humans eat").
"Oxygen"-- comprised mainly of an ominous, one-note acoustic guitar rhythm-- is the clear stand-out. This is Mason's protest song, a procession of declarations, consolations and encouragements, each line a self-contained crescendo. "We can be richer than industry as long as we know there are things that we don't really need," Mason intones, then slips in Holden Caulfieldisms like, "I wanna see through all the lies of society, to the reality; happiness is at stake." But these shallower invocations of dreaded Society only reveal Mason's tender age and amplify the song's impact. It seems to stem from a well of deep feeling and genuine concern. "Oxygen" displays a moral clarity that's easier to attain when you're young, but which makes for truly uplifting music, even to jaded moral relativists like me. "Do you remember the forgotten America, justice, equality, freedom for every race?" Mason asks with hushed intensity. If only for the span of this elemental song, you can remember the simple solutions of your idealistic youth, and it feels pretty fine.
