CD Review: Mason Proper "Olly Oxen Free"

Since the early 1980s, groups like The Violent Femmes and The Magnetic Fields have been characterized by a lyrical wit that often centers on drolly sagacious poetics and rapid bon mots. Modest Mouse's generally shrewd epigrams represent perhaps the most successful continuation of this winkingly intellectual tradition, and perceptive couplets play like the indie-rock equivalent of a Mitch Hedberg routine. Mason Proper's previous album There is A Moth in Your Chest featured a similar propensity for slightly agonized notable-quotables, and on Olly Oxen Free the group works to refine its articulation of those insights while expanding the musical structures that support them.

The album opens atmospherically enough with an almost western guitar line, a sustained pipe organ and a pounding drum verse that breaks succinctly and rests surprisingly. Jonathan Visger's wry lyrics soon introduce themselves, and the vocal tone of the subsequent ten tracks is accurately presaged when he laments with a slight crackle "I bought a tea leaf to find out where you are/but I drank it." Most of the songs feature such passing ironies, and interjections like "in past lives I was wealthy/so probably unhappy/I'm so glad I died" are sufficiently clever to render the smartly accessible and varied melodies more complex than those of an Arctic Monkeys single. The inviting choruses of "Point A to Point B" and "Lock and Key" darken to the portentous "Downpour" and caustic "Alone" before "Safe for the Time Being" closes the album with staggered electronic harmonies reminiscent of a later ELO.

A full, warmly humming production makes the album sound as if it was recorded in a large, wood-paneled room (it was, co-produced with Chris Coady), and the audible enthusiasm that propels the tracks might indeed be best conveyed live. Because, for all of the songs' witticisms, they don't seem to say quite all that they might. Though ready for the audience to sing in concert, repeated choruses such as "I travel from Point A/to Point B/to Point C/trying to lose my points along the way" feel a little hollow, as if the glimmering vocals are more acoustically than analytically layered. Similarly, the lunatic "Alone" is obviously cynical in its soapbox announcement regarding "500 hundred people on this block/shaking hands/yes they're doing good/because business is good," yet it might do more than be obviously cynical. The album has some great moments lyrically, but they are occasionally diluted by buffers of enthusiastic excess.

Even considering this minor fluff though, Olly Oxen Free effectively communicates its often comical maxims. The lyrics evidence a keen intellect when they are not coasting on these amusing smarts, and the increasingly dance-provoking melodies may make Mason Proper a candidate to continue the tradition of its jocosely astute predecessors.

Score: 8/10

Previous MCMB coverage:
Weekend Picks: 10 Free Songs to Check Out
Video of the Day: "Rest Up"

Purchase the album here.

Fall Tour Dates:
09/25: Ann Arbor, MI @ The Blind Pig (CD Release Party)
10/21: New York, NY @ Rehab (Dovecote Records CMJ Showcase)
10/31: Mt. Pleasant, MI @ Rubbles Bar
11/01: East Lansing, MI @ Small Planet
11/10: Washington, DC @ Black Cat
11/11: New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
11/12: Danbury, CT @ Herloom Arts Theater
11/13: Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Downstairs
11/15: Rochester, NY @ Bug Jar