Beta Off Alone

Gone are the guises, psych-folk fusions and tangled metaphors. Steve Mason talks to Harriet Gibsone about his stunning return to form…

Steve Mason may have been a ubiquitous yet enigmatic presence in every discerning music fan’s record collection for the best part of a decade, but the ex-frontman of The Beta Band and man behind King Biscuit Time and Black Affair returns this month with an altogether new guise; himself. His new album, ‘Boys Outside’, is one of 2010’s most compelling and affecting releases yet. He’s a pleasure to be in the company of, in confident spirits as he sips on an orange juice in an East London pub. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d met me ten years ago!” Mason laughs. “I used to hate doing interviews, but now I think it’s really a privilege to be asked to do this – I think you have to go through a period where nobody’s interested in talking to you to realise that.” Indeed – despite the critically acclaimed albums and indie credentials, Mason is coming out of a long period of anonymity and ‘Boys Outside’ is certainly not afraid of letting the world know just how desperate and damaging the past few years have been. These fully-fledged melancholy-pop ballads, tinged with all their soulful sadness and crooked beats, are amongst the boldest compositions he’s ever created. Is this why he’s releasing the album under his own name? “My manager suggested it to me, instantly I thought ‘No!’ because I didn’t want to be – who’s the wobbly head guy who plays the piano? David Gray. I didn’t want to be like James Morrison. I didn’t want to be lumped in with all those cunts,” he explains with a wry smile. “I had about five or six different MySpaces all with different types of music on them under different names, and it was ridiculous. It feels quite mature of me to be called myself to be honest, everybody likes to move forward in life, and I love it when my girlfriend’s angry and calls me STEVE!!!” Produced by Richard X, whose previous works have included Liberty X, Rachel Stevens, Sugababes and Kelis, Mason explains that he enjoyed the contrariness of working with someone with such a manufactured-pop background. “Even in The Beta Band I wanted to work with a pop producer. Unfortunately it just never happened, I always thought it would be a really interesting idea for a band like us or an artist like me,” he says. “I’m much better at editing myself now, anyway. I never used to take any interest in song structures – ten-minute songs when they should be a three-minute pop song,” he says. “I find it much more exciting to almost compete with that pop world – it’s something I should have worked out years ago, that pop format. It’s such a standard format that everyone uses.” We can see what he means; there’s a simplicity about songs like ‘The Letter’, a soaring ballad with almost child-like verses and solemnly anthemic choruses, Mason obliterating his usual metaphors and tangled lyrics in favour of unabashed, heartbreaking honesty. Was it nerve-wracking to lay all of his emotions on the line? “A lot of people say that to me. I always feel a bit baffled, I always think ‘fuck, what do you mean? Maybe I shouldn’t have written these lyrics!’ People like me who are writing songs about love and your relationships, they should always be like that. I write from my heart about me and my life and you don’t want to get to the point where you’re constructing songs from fake emotions,” he adamantly states. “It’s never bothered me. I thought it was a good thing and a healthy thing. To put it out there. All these people walk around with these emotions inside them every day and that’s never really healthy. So I write songs and hopefully connect with people.” With his first live shows in years looming, it doesn’t seem like isolation will be on the cards for one of the UK’s most endlessly imaginative artists any time soon. Stirring, cathartic and totally unique, we wait with baited breath to see what Steve Mason turns his hand to next.

‘Boys Outside’ is released on Double Six on May 3rd.