Its King Biscuit Time! - 7-27-10

"“I suddenly realised I was bored of pissing around with drum machines, and all that stuff. Just that immediate thing, where you can actually perform a song with a guitar – it seems really obvious, because I’ve done it loads in the past – but I’d forgotten it was possible. You can actually create some really beautiful magic with just that instrument and a voice. So I started writing lots of stuff like that again.”

Its always a real personal joy to discover someone who you really liked, who brought you much pleasure, whose creativity defined a moment in time reappears with great new work. We get used to certain people never going away, always being on the edge of our perception, continuing to work their trade, some just do their thing like Neil Young who is touring solo again this summer. Some like Dylan re-energize themselves every few years with new collaborators and there are of course those who decide they will enliven our days with orchestral workings of their canon, like his royal highness Sting, a generosity of spirit that I am always impressed by. I mean if you can’t fill your boots with lute madrigals then Englishman in New York with cellos, maybe?

When its someone who has struggled with the fame and attention that the pop world thrusts on the successful and have since disappeared into obscure side projects where their defining talents are hidden in a welter of techno or grime and they come back with strong songs sung in the voice of the past its time to smile. When its a collection of songs perfect for the swelter of summer days, music to eat lunch on the terrace with a glass of chilled Bandol to, a soundtrack to long drives to the lakes and beaches then its time to celebrate. 

Steve Mason was the voice behind the songs of the Beta Band who blew everyone away with their first 3 EPs which became the first album and they were name checked by all and sundry in the late 90’s. There is a great scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack boasts to Jack Black that he can play a song that is guaranteed to impresses a cute female customer in his record store, he does, she is, head’s bob in the store and in the movie theatre... and the song is Dry the Rain by the Beta Band with Steve Mason’s lead vocal.

The Beta Band were maybe too eclectic for their own good and they never found the magic mix of beats, loops, grooves and melodies in the same way in the next record (although the final two albums were great they were commercially also rans). Mason was both depressed by the weight of expectations placed on him after the success of 3EPs and an extreme perfectionist to the point having delivered their first proper album they then described it as “f*cking awful” and “the worst record made this year”, which did not exactly endear them to their record company.

Happily I can say the his new solo album Boys Outside is “f*cking great” and my vote for the best record of the summer.

So while you smile along to Understand My Heart or Stress Position what should you be drinking? If you can’t find a chilled Bandol it still must be a Rosé and what better option for the money than the 2009 Rosé from Jas d'Esclans, its a Côtes de Provence vineyard about 12 kms from the Mediterranean so it is as close to being in Provence as you can get in a glass.