This one’s a no-brainer.
We will introduce you to Conor Mason in a moment, but before you read on, do yourself a favour, and toddle off to his myspace site (www.myspace.com/conormason), follow the instructions, and download a free copy of his new album, When It’s Over. Listen to it a few times, allow its sleepy, unassuming charm to creep up on you, and then tell everyone you know to do likewise. Go on, give it a go. You have my permission and, much more importantly, you have Conor’s too.
“I just want people to hear it,” he says. “I’m really happy with how it’s turned out, but it can sometimes be a real struggle to get people interested. So, I reckon this is as good a way as any: let them hear it for free then, hopefully, they’ll come and see me play live and keep an eye out for whatever I do in the future.”
You’ll not find a better bargain this side of Christmas.
A native of Derry, Conor first came to people’s attention at the turn of the decade while part of the outrageously tuneful Gentle Ben – a bite-size Teenage Fanclub (he shared songwriting duties with Kevin Nash, now of Trip Fontaine), that began drifting apart as its various members set off on their own stylistic directions. For Conor, however, the split proved surprisingly non-traumatic. Moving to Glasgow for a university course, he found that the writing discipline he’d picked up in his former band served him well. Armed with some decent technology and a few sympathetic flatmates, he soon got busy crafting an impressive body of solo work.
“I’ve no problem locking myself away for a good while working,” he admits. “So, it didn’t take me long getting a load of songs written. I have a laptop, Q-Bass SX, a few Dynamic mics and a decent Condenser. It’s all layered. I would love a faster computer, because it can be pretty time consuming. But I suppose the fact I have to take so much time over the details means that the songs have a bit of depth.”
Aside from input for “my mate Alex, who plays drums on the final track”, every instrument you hear on When It’s Over is played by Conor himself.
Given the all-consuming extent of his involvement on the project, when you’re confronted by the wintry cover art (a pair of brow-beaten, washed-out figures standing either side of a disconsolate Godot-esque tree) and run an eye over the hardly chortlesome bent of the song titles (‘Backing A Lost Cause’. ‘Falling Out Of Touch’, ‘Beyond Repair’), the temptation is to wonder if Conor’s been in a dark place over recent times.
It’s an assumption, however, that he’s quick to laugh off.
“I’m not a miserable bastard at all,” he says. “But I’ve never really been into happy music. I’ve always been drawn towards more melancholy stuff – your Elliot Smiths and Sparklehorses. What I hope is that people would maybe see that the songs and lyrics could allude to anyone and be applied to all sorts of situations.”
Indeed, it’s a record that with every listen dispels any initial slow-core or Emo concerns. ‘When It’s Over’ is a beaten-up but ultimately blissful album – which leads us to wonder if, with a bit of luck and some sympathetic and wise guidance, Mason could be the North’s twenty something (and hopefully cleaner living) version of Michael Head.
“I had a lot of the songs written before I started recording them,” he says. “But it was fascinating watching how they would change as I tried to finish them. When you’ve been working on songs for so long, they always end up differently from how you imagined. And when you gather them all together on a CD, it’s weird how they automatically sound better.”
And, if the can-do Mr Mason has any say in the matter, there will be many more to come.
“People sometimes think ‘I don’t have this, I don’t have that. I can’t afford to go to a big studio. I’ll never get a deal’. But they shouldn’t give up. If you have the songs, a bit of determination, and some desire to educate yourself, you get your head down and it’s possible to achieve anything.”