My first exposure to Willy Mason was the video for Oxygen, and at some point afterwards I saw this in my local HMV. I was buying a couple of other 7 inches, but this turned out to be the pick of the bunch. Nicely packaged with a poster (and a story about a lion), the a-side is an acoustic live version with a choir and the b-side is a non-album track. Not bad for £1.
Willy plays very pleasant, crowd-pleasing folky, acoustic-y music. I can imagine his albums going down very well at the end of a long road-trip, when no one really has anything left to say to each other. I saw him once at a very wet and muddy Glastonbury on the new Park stage and he was great (I even controversially missed seeing the Manics to watch him, but that was mostly because we were camped near the Park and the Pyramid was a huge trek in the mud away). Save Myself is one of his best songs (based on the two albums I own, behind Oxygen) and this version is particularly lovely. The choir singing the choruses really makes it. Having heard this first, the album version was actually slightly disappointing. Mosquitoes is a perfectly fine song; not a song that'll ever change the world, but nice enough.
Format: 7", 14x21" poster sleeve
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 19/02/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
