Willy Mason, Thomas Dybdahl Preview

Mason’s worldwide tally for 2004’s Where The Humans Eat (Team Love/Astralwerks) was some 100,000 copies — nothing to sneeze at. Sales figures certainly aren’t everything, but when you take into account Mason’s gruff, wise-man tone and weighty material they say something. In hindsight, his stint opening for Conor Oberst awhile back was like Johnny Cash taking second billing to Jeff Buckley. His grave voice and protest songs led people to be shocked at his appearance; currently he’s nearly eight months shy of his 23rd birthday.

If The Ocean Gets Rough starts appropriately enough with “Gotta Keep Walking,” and Mason continues his trend of storytelling from multiple vantage points, be it a son trapped by family history (“The World That I Wanted”), the truth behind a provincial upbringing (“Simple Town”), or old age and infirmity (“When The Leaves Have Fallen”). Mason’s aversion to dancing poetry (it’s not just an accidental surname) causes him to rely on utility and his uncomplicated folk rock follows suit.

Dybdahl’s Science (released 2007 in the U.S. on Rykodisc; 2006 in Europe) suggests he’s more than willing to get away from the Nick Drake/Jeff Buckley comparisons that obscured his last album, One Day You Will Dance With Me New York City (Recall), like an avalanche of fall leaves in the States. While his fluttery falsetto perches on the white-soul of “U,” he sounds more of the lite eccentricities of Ed Harcourt or Nicolai Dunger on “Still My Body Aches” and “This Year,” while the whispered “Something Real” invokes a shuffling take on Iron & Wine.

Oddly enough, however, it’s the least adventurous track on Science, “Always,” that’s most arresting. Wrapping his voice in a Nina Simone-like androgyny, a simple set-up of nylon guitar, bass, and drums gets subtlely lifted by rising strings and female harmonies. Dybdahl, perhaps self-consciously, holds himself down and allows himself to be enveloped by his band.