Live Review: ‘The crowd are his people’ – Steve Mason at Leeds Belgrave Music Hall


Steve Mason

Gavin Watson




Earlier on in the day (Feb 1st), Steve Mason is using his social media account to highlight the Big Brother-esque ramifications of facial recognition technology being used to track our movements inch by inch; not yet sent into total hiding by the man, by 9.30pm he’s on stage in Leeds sporting a cape and laying into the opening bars of Stars Around My Heart, the signature track from his masterful new album About The Light.

It’s a record designed to help the Beta Band singer break the glass ceiling between making a living as comfortably niche and having songs sung about you; his former band were arguably the biggest cult outfit of their generation, but it’s still taken the fifteen years since their dissolution for him to start talking about achieving greatness and mean it about himself.

Toting a deliberately meatier set of rhythms than before, About The Light’s bold soulfulness is as suited to being played live as anything the Scot has ever made, a roster so confidence building that rather than going down the traditional route of introducing it piecemeal, tonight’s setlist is almost a complete rendering of material which is no longer scared of going for the groove jugular.

One of the obvious further coups is the recruitment of ‘Little’ Barrie Cadogan on guitar, his obvious flair and gusto adding a rootsy dimension to the likes of America Is Your Boyfriend and Walking Away From Love. In between songs Mason continues to front things his way, happily admitting that his former vehicle Black Affair was a good idea gone bad, and not long after pausing to restart A Lot Of Love after a forgotten opening chord.

The audience, of course, has forgiven him for the slip almost before anyone realises it’s been made, such is the affection in which the singer is held. An unconditional relationship which means that About The Light’s best moments – the astral Fox On The Rooftop and love song of sorts Spanish Brigade – are received like old friends.

It’s that sort of night; long relocated to the south coast, recent fatherhood and personal stability for Mason have clearly brought with it purpose, giving him the self-belief to reject calls to retrace his steps and instead take the harder road of writing new music which has a smile on its face.

As an exercise in understanding whether Mason’s determination to be his potential will change the fundamental arc of his career, tonight was never going to be a fair indication or otherwise: the crowd are his people and they’re here to show they care as much as to be entertained. One version of the greatness that he seeks involves facial recognition of a different kind, a future in a bigger spotlight which in a former life he spent a decade running from.

Anyone successfully guessing what happens next is a genius.

(Andy Peterson)


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