From Edinburgh but now based in Comrie, Mason is a breathwork therapist and ‘outdoor nature sprite’ with a deep connection to the landscapes of Perthshire and the natural world. Having found his voice at a songwriting workshop led by Findlay Napier and Boo Hewerdine, drawing musical influences from the likes of Spell Songs, Kris Drever and Will Varley and thematic threads from the transformative power of nature. Overstory is his hugely impressive debut album.
With producer Chris Pepper also serving as multi-instrumentalist, it’s peppered [any pun intended Mike? – Ed] with an array of folk luminaries, not least Susy Wall who sings backing vocals on seven tracks (two apiece seeing her joined by Maria Quinn and Shirley Barr) and shares a writing credit on one of them.
Inspired by David Schofield’s painting ‘Flying A Kite In A Walnut Forest’ and ‘Overstory’, Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize winner about nine individuals drawn together in their fight to save virgin forests and how the trees communicate with each other, Pete Harvey on cello and viola with the verses spoken to strummed guitar, the environmental theme is established from the start with ‘Forest’, sounding out the message the wild wood sends (“We say listen to our truth. You need us – we need you/Stop before you kill us all and take yourselves too…Look out for one another you must share what you have/Keep clear communication connect with others to survive…Let the winds of change pass through you, gain and loss are part of life/Remember to die gracefully and give yourself to earth”).
Riding an urgent, drum-driven poppy folk rock rhythm, ‘Nightingale’, Aaron Catlow on fiddle and Gustaf Ljunggren on mandolin, is self-evidently of an avian persuasion and the lessons we can learn (“Teach us how to live another way/Sing your song and keep the world alive/With every tune it reaches deep inside”), while, again featuring Catlow and underpinned by organ with Emma Neck on backing, the steady plodding, vocally tumbling and bluesy ‘Sometimes’, the Wall co-write, is an encouragement to not let things get on top of you and when “sometimes you never get a good day/Always a problem, big bad news day/You choose, you lose” and you feel like you want to leave it all, wife and kids, behind, you “need to just wake up/Jump start, kick start, do a little make up…force a smile/Step into the world and do a little fake up”.
Those notes of positivity swell into the fingerpicked ‘Something Beautiful’, a love story of two troubled souls (“She was in doubt/She was always looking for something/An easy way out/He was a clown/He was a fool/He was always looking for some way/Of breaking the rules”) coming together, Harvey’s string section adding an extra emotional resonance.
Taken at an assured walking rhythm, ‘Wild Child’ is another bluesy and slight gospel-tinged groove which, incorporating an excerpt from ‘Rewild The Child’, George Monbiot’s 2013 Guardian essay arguing a week in the countryside is worth three months in a classroom, is another encouragement to fly your freak flag when “they’ll say that you are nothing/They’ll tell you you are bad/If you don’t join the system/They’ll think that you are mad/You’re just another sinner/Don’t question what you hear/Just tune into the story/And live your life in fear” and to “trust yourself to get there/And step into the flow”.
Catlow on achingly lovely fiddle and Mason’s brogue warm and tender complemented by Wall’s backing, the gently swaying ‘Sweet Spirit’ is another love song with a Scottish lilt (“You make me laugh, you make we weep/My heart to fly, my soul to keep”), then, opening with sparse plucked notes accompanying co-writer Anna Howell’s haunting vocals, Harvey on cello and Katrina Lee and Patsy Reid respectively on violin and viola, it’s back to feathered subjects with the atmospherically insidious ‘Crows’ wherein the birds can be either harbingers of doom or “wise advisors…sent to revive us” (“their flight can lead us from despair”), the song an environmental activist’s call that “the time has come, to cleanse the earth/Of all our broken bones”.
It enters the final stretch with Pepper on piano and Harvey on cello with Seonaid Aitken and Katrina Lee on violin and Patsy Reid on viola for the slow Scottish folk blues ‘Is It Over’ with its gradual building hymnal hope of epiphany and catharsis (“Could we be healed…Walk away from fear/It’s over now… Walking hand in hand/We can start rebuilding/Take joy in our land”). The exultation swells with the gathering massed voices of the Earnsong Choir swelling the strummed and stripped back spiritual ‘Carry Me’ (“Take me down to the river…let me feel you on my body…when we touch you take my breath…let me feel your silk embrace/Around me, around me, in the water”) in its hymn about embracing nature’s healing power (“We must wait until the rain/We must ask for life again/We must tell your story true/She will ease your weary blues…something deep is flowing through your life/She will call your name and bring you back to life”).
Overstory ends with the keys-accompanied title track ballad (where you might detect a touch of Lennon) and a final call to shake off the shackles (“nothing ever happens/Until you let go what’s inside/The outside’s a reflection/Of the shadow that you hide/Open up your weary heart/There’s more that you can do/The voice you knew so well/Is calling out to you”), a closing reminder that “it’s time to listen/It’s time to believe/Time to remember/Let go and breathe” and how “what we need is a new revolution/Based on nature’s constitution/ Equality for every women, man and child/And every creature that lives in the wild” because “we all belong to this earth family/Whatever your gender your race or your class/We gotta get past ‘them and us’/Then maybe one day the story will stop/And the bars in our minds will all simply drop/We’ll all see the world with eyes that are free/And live in the way nature meant us to be…where every single life on earth is sovereign”. Mason’s answer to the Desiderata, it ends with the blessing “Be at peace and let go of your strife/Take your place in the web of life”.
Music that seeks to heal, awaken and inspire, it stakes a solid claim for a place among the year’s finest and is without doubt the best Scottish debut since Norman Paterson.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.johnpaulmason.com
‘Nightingale’ – official video:
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