Scotsman Steve Mason has steadily crawled from the wreckage of the Beta Band to become one of our most compelling singer-songwriters. Three albums under his own name have delivered elegiac bittersweet symphonies filled with agony and ecstasy, acoustic guitars, electronica and dub. However, strip them down and he emerges as a modern-day troubadour, with tunes that could easily be wafting across a field at Glastonbury or taken up by buskers.
Mason’s latest album, Meet the Humans, has been released to what he cheerily calls “stunning reviews – even though I say it myself”, which has given him the confidence to build an entire set around it. Where audiences often treat new material as a cue to visit the loo, someone responds to the brilliant, motorik Hardly Go Through by yelling, “Play it again!”
Mason has become a superb singer, capable of holding notes, and a waggish raconteur. When “awwws” follow his description of the sublime Run Away as a song about his broken heart, he quips, “Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead.” Moments later, he cheerily introduces a tune about breaking into Tony Blair’s house to set him on fire. His political side is less dominant now but more powerful for it. Fight Them Back’s cry to respond to the “dismantling” of democracy “with a fist, a boot and baseball bat” is as incendiary as pop gets, but importantly is delivered over a very funky beat.
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At Electric Brixton, London, 29 April, then touring. Box office: 020-7274 2290.
