Did you know that we’re getting taller? It’s down to a number of factors, but you can bet that as always it’s the progeny of the better-off who are experiencing the greatest growth. Better homes, better grub, less manual labour etc. (in fact I would observe that apart from carrying handfuls of pints of lager the most strenuous thing that most of this lot has ever done is endure the rigours of a Mummy and Daddy funded gap year around the resorts of Thailand). Most of the crowd tonight are huge – taller than my six feet – and the diminutive Photographer doesn’t stand a chance. She does manage at one point to get close to the stage, where a generous fellow who’s sketching gives her space for a couple of clear shots. Luckily, as I read somewhere, “there is an upper limit to height beyond which our genes are not equipped to take us, regardless of environmental improvements”. Phew! Otherwise I’d have to start gigging with a stepladder.

Willy’s new album is pretty good. He’s grown up a bit and his writing – even if it is still full of rite of passage angst (he’s still only 22) displays a greater depth and maturity. It was recorded with a bunch of friends and a few ‘guests’, such as KT Tunstall, who sang on the catchy single ‘Save myself’. And still on drums is brother Sam, whose loose and lazy playing drives most of the songs along, and also gives Willy what a marketeer might call, “an ownable sound”. Sam, and some of those friends, are on stage tonight, looking and behaving like a bunch of students in someone’s living room. There are no roadies, and the Jack has been replaced by occasional furtive pulls from a bottle of red wine. There’s a certain naïveté about the performance that doesn’t match the knowingness of many of Mason’s songs. Willy himself is so laid back you might think he was sleepwalking – he barely engages with the audience through anything other than his songs. When his guitarist breaks a string (no second guitar) Willy improvises an awkward chatting up the audience routine – “Hi, where y’all from?”, “Can I buy you a drink? Cider all round” (cheers). When he has a guitar problem – “It’s all gone tits-up man” he invites the band to improvise some “tits-up” music. And when he changes tuning on his guitar for ‘Gotta keep movin’ he demonstrates that he might have an ear for a song, but not necessarily for a note. Someone should lend him a tenner to buy a Korg tuner.

This led to an interesting post gig discussion about some of your French words Serge. Was this gauche or jejeune? Or something more knowing and contrived? Well, the undergraduate audience loved it, just like they did the lines from ‘Our town’ – “I’ve got some white bread, cheese spread, and some mayonnaise”, which they sang with gusto (but if that’s all they eat then how come they’re so bloody tall?). And Mason worked them well – carefully mixing the ‘old’ favourites like ‘Where the humans eat’ and ‘Fear no pain’ with the new material, ‘The world that I wanted’, ‘Save myself’, ‘Riptide’ and the final song of the main set ‘When the leaves have fallen’, a very nice tune with some intriguing guitar that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Jarvis Cocker song. It’s all very good stuff – with solid performances from the band (Sam’s drumming is exceptional) and well-balanced sound.

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