Track Review: Steve Mason – ‘About the Light’

 “About the Light” has the vibe of the 60s!

The intro to this tune reminded me from something out of Hair and I was digging it. The song has a great upbeat feeling that makes me want to go back to San Francisco and hang out with the hippies. 

The chorus was quite repetitive, simplistic, and hard to understand due to the fact that the lyrics were the same, repeated over and over again. But the musical setting — a cool bluesy rock tone similar to that of The Beatles — fit the style of the song. 

Sadly, there were only two verses and a lot of the chorus, so the song was kind of boring. “About the Light” eventually falls flat due to the fact that there was only experimentation with genre-bending and not with lyrics. There needs to be more than two short verses and a chorus that is longer than either verse combined.

If the Steve Mason had written more verses, or even a bridge to the song, it would have felt more whole.  The song wasted a good minute and a half by just repeating the pre-chorus and the chorus three times and because of that, the song was four and a half minutes of indistinct repetitious slurring. 

I enjoyed the feeling the “About the Light” ggives off, and I wish there had been more verses to allow me to feel that upbeat vibe.

I enjoyed the production of this song. Stephen Street has never worked with Mason (formerly of the Beta Band) before, but his work with Blur and the Smiths prove insightful. 

The ’60s vibe Mason gives off was great for this year because there are a ton of millennials and gen-zers looking into older sounding music and I think they would enjoy this.

The instrumentals and the production on “About the Light” proved outstanding and overpowered the failed lyrics. If there was another day in the studio, cleaning up the vocals would be my first suggestion.