Steve Mason is always in a state of transition. The Beta Band, destined for both greatness and record sales, found label trouble and wrote a white-boy rap so terrible that people remember it. They were constantly about to peak until they were obviously releasing post-peak albums. When Mason's post-Beta King Biscuit Time work (and his album as Black Affair) failed to catch on, he disappeared and fans worried for his mental health. He was rumored to be in debt. His career, his life even, began to resemble his voice: wispy, elusive, sad.
Last year's Boys Outside, Mason's first album under his own name, was the first Mason product to suggest stability. A blanched, graceful folk-rock album, it was placid like a heart trauma victim begged by his family to settle down for the good of his health. I mean this musically: Mason's track record on his most spastic work is spotty. He returns to this material on Ghosts Outside, working with UK-based dub veteran Dennis Bovell (whose previous production credits include Mason-friendly touchstones like the Pop Group and Orange Juice) to re-work Boys Outside's 10 tracks into classically echoing dub pop.
Anyone waiting for a playful, Mason-esque twist can stop. Ghosts Outside is a sober, catholic dub remix album: one new mix for each track, re-branded with a "dub" title (e.g. "Hound on My Heel" is now "Dub on My Heel", "Am I Just a Man" now "Dub I Just a Man"). Mason was one of the late-90s pop chameleons, so he's no stranger to Reggae and dub music (a personal favorite), but Ghosts Outside represents the first time he has lain himself prostrate before a genre. Possibly in deference to Bovell, possibly because Ghosts Outside is an exercise as much as it is an album, Mason has no interest in coloring outside the lines.
Still, there are gains to be had. Dub is the rare technique that feels both transgressive and cliché, and it fills both roles here. Bovell scatters Mason's vocals, which untether his songs in interesting ways. "The Letter", so deliberate in Mason's hands, stalks aimlessly under Bovell, its chorus suddenly ascendant. Bovell's treatments cause the song structures to dissipate but stratify the productions, providing layers through which Mason's voice filters (a crucial function of the best Beta Band compositions). The robust horn charts of "Lost and Dub" and especially "Yesterday Dub" swallow Mason whole and provide a rigid counterpoint to his gummy croon. While I wish Mason and Bovell had found a way to do this without resorting to the trope-iest of dub tropes-- chirpy guitar chords, reflective drums, pliable basslines-- the effect is, at times, enlightening.
The Mason Fan Club (we meet Wednesdays at 7; dues are collected quarterly) will want this. It is novel, in its way: Mason, who once seemed capable of inventing a new genre with each track, reverently bowed before dub reggae, a staple fetish of Western European pop (see also: Serge Gainsbourg, the Clash, the Police). You're forgiven if you find the idea underwhelming, but it wasn't so long ago that the prospect of any new Mason material seemed doubtful. He's returned, calmer, still exploring, but doing so carefully.
