22 Dec 2023
James Cameron is at the Beta Band singer’s sell-out Horn gig…
The name Steve Mason might not mean much to you, but he was the lead singer and one of the driving forces behind late-90s Scottish indie darlings the Beta Band, immortalised in the film High Fidelity where John Cusack’s character announces he will sell five copies of their album just by putting on the song ‘Dry the Rain’. It is almost 20 years since the band broke up, and since then Mason has been pursuing a range of side-projects and solo work, but there is clearly still a lot of love for him in St Albans where his show at the Horn sold out early enough to prompt a second visit on January 29.
Before we get onto Steve, though, we have his support act. John Mouse describes himself as the ‘Welsh James Brown’, though to be fair I’m not sure anyone else would leap to that comparison. He first appears as a slightly unprepossessing figure, a bespectacled man with a Yamaha, but when the songs start and he begins leaping around the stage you realise he is quite the charismatic show man. Only a few songs in he is already topless, although this was apparently an accident.
His sound is to an extent driven by his set-up, there are no other band members and he is very reliant on his keyboard, but this does not tether him and he is continually leaping around the stage and throwing shapes.
Being a solo act allows him to control all aspects of his performance, and he sees the concept of bands as the norm for live music as quite antiquated.
There was a great variety to the songs, one will remind you of the Human League but by the next one he’s channelling Ian Curtis and Joy Division. I followed up with John afterwards, and surprisingly he confesses to be less interested in the musical side of things. Whilst he loves the performance, he has reached a point where he works with a producer who creates the music, and it is their influences (he specifically mentions OMD and Kraftwerk) that are coming to the fore.
So the music is really there to support John Mouse’s meandering but beguiling storytelling, which he will claim full credit for. He covers topics as wide-ranging as buy-to-let landlords and neighbours who fail to close their curtains properly, and there is a touch of Arab Strapesque seediness to proceedings. The person I found myself most thinking of, though, was comedy character John Shuttleworth who operates in a similar world of Yamaha beats and everyday concerns. In fact ‘Hot Car’, a tribute to a silver Citroen, brought to mind the other John’s classic ‘Austin Ambassador Y Reg’. For me there can be no higher praise.
John Mouse provided that level of satisfaction that you only get from someone who has the complete confidence to follow their own path, no matter how idiosyncratic, and follow it whole-heartedly. He is a fantastic entertainer as well, engaging with the audience throughout and sending us out into the world with a final snippet of Simply Red, for reasons best known to himself.
So onto the main event. There is an inherent imbalance to the music industry that significantly favours innovation over craft. Bands and singers will appear with a new sound and ride the zeitgeist, but as they then begin to perfect and really explore the full potential of their early promise the Sauron-like gaze of the media has shifted onto the next big thing.
There is something of this with Steve Mason, the songs on his new album Brothers and Sisters have a definite feel of the Beta Band to them, but have progressed and reached a new level. Whilst he might not be featuring in John Cusack films anymore, the crowd were very much behind him and were enthusiastically singing along to his solo work.
He had a small but tight band supporting him. Originally I though there was a drummer, a percussionist and Steve himself who would start playing percussion at times, and I wondered where the actual music was coming from. Then I spotted a keyboard below the collection of maracas and tambourines and the mystery was resolved. Rhythm is clearly important, though, and forms the bedrock of the music being performed. At times it seemed like what we might in the ‘80s have called ‘World Rhythms’, strong driving percussive beats but not in a classic rock structure, and I found myself thinking of Peter Gabriel which was not a direction I was expecting.
As a classic Indie Kid at heart, I did slightly feel the lack of guitars. Apparently Steve had injured his hand on broken glass otherwise he would have been playing one alongside the drums, but it did not impact too much and the fact that they can overcome this and still play a tight and musically exciting show is testament to the band he has put together.
It is worth noting that there was some great moustaches on show, especially from the keyboardist Darren Morris, who I was not entirely convinced wasn’t a Mark Williams comedy character.
Drummer Calie Hough has some catching up to do on the facial hair front, but provided a strong guiding force to the music.
Early on in the set he launched into ‘Dogs Got A Bone’ by the Beta Band, which was a pleasant surprise as I was assuming it would be solo work only. This was a beautifully haunting skeletal version and gave a hit of energy to the audience.
A lot of the songs on offer were on the ethereal loveliness end of the scale, rather than out and out rockers, and I did think how nice it would be to see the band play in a 1920s style nightclub where you could sit at a table, with staff bringing you drinks, and just really appreciate the wonderful crafting of the music and Mason’s soulful voice. This might be because I am old, though, and so very very tired.
One thing I would have appreciated is a bit more engagement with the crowd. Steve Mason seems like a thoroughly personable chap and when he did give a bit of chat, for example on a slightly disturbing anecdote about a fox before ‘Fox on the Rooftop’ or at the end when he revealed that St Albans was the first show to sell out, it created even more of a bond with the audience.
The finale of the show was blistering. There was a cracking rendition of the aforementioned ‘Dry the Rain’, not in the grudging way that some acts approach the jewels of their back catalogue, feeling they might get lynched if they don’t play it. Instead this was a great song played by someone who wanted to play it because they knew it was fantastic and totally owning it.
There was a bit of between song self-shushing from the crowd as the chatting levels had obviously got too high, which I fully approved of, before they started on another Beta classic, ‘Squares’, then the keyboardist took us into the break with a delightfully twiddly coda. With the crowd on a high we got a tight encore of three songs, and were even taught a bit of call and response for the final song, ‘People Say’, which took us out on a blissed out high of almost Happy Mondays style gospel, complete with tambourine.
This was an invigorating and uplifting show from beginning to end, and you lucky people have a chance to catch it again when the Travelling Hard tour returns to the Horn on the 29th (although given St Albans’ excellent transport links I’m not sure how hard the travelling actually was). I fully recommend this second chance to catch a musical innovator operating at the top of his game.
