Throughout his many musical pursuits – fronting the Beta Band, King Biscuit Time and Black Affair, and his 2010 and 2013 solo albums – the purity of Steve Mason’s songwriting has never before sounded so beautifully at peace, buoyed by the weightlessness of emotional resolution. Boys Outside and Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time felt like a process of recuperation, at times agonisingly dark, uncomfortably confrontational. But Meet the Humans is overwhelmed by warmth, dispelling the myth that with tortured darkness comes great art. Produced by Elbow’s Craig Potter, it’s both tender – as on the dreamlike Through My Window – and triumphant: Like Water is the type of confident, joyous indie anthem Noel Gallagher would trade his entire collection of collarless leather jackets for. It ends on the rapturous Words in My Head. “Please don’t ever listen to the words I say,” he repeats on this heady love song, addressed to another, or perhaps, even, addressed to himself: “I love you, in my way.”
