Mason Jennings
Bone Clouds
Epic (2006)

By: Nicholas Nocketback

John Lennon + Jack Johnson = Mason Jennings

For those of you who are not familiar with Mason Jennings, I am sorry. For the rest of us, this album was a long time coming. To put Jennings in perspective—so as to familiarize the Fresnan lacking feeling—I will try my best to describe his sound. Imagine if you will Tom Petty sitting on an Afghan rug with his shoes off, green tea steeping, while John Lennon (post Beatles) writes lyrics. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan sets down his ipod and picks up a llama skin tambourine to get in on the jam. If this mental image doesn’t work, or you happen to be too young to remember such figures, think of Jack Johnson strummin’ his guitar on the banks of a river in upper Minnesota. Either way, the cat is dope and has a unique sound all his own.
His most beloved album—and one of my favorites, getting ridiculous airplay in my Civic to this day—is 2004’s Use Your Voice. His folk sound resonates with many who find emotional rock and whiny R&B over produced and tiresome. The thing is, you can never not recognize the talent of a solid singer/song writer. Bone Clouds is not as nice (I am using the hip-hop affiliated term “nice” here) as Voice, but it does stray a bit from his traditional sound, if that is what you are looking for from Mason.
The first track, “Be Here Now”, sounds as if it could have been a lost Lennon recording. Other tracks such as “If You Aint Got Love” and “Jackson Square” are quintessential Jennings. Yet he also experiments with the synthesizer on “Where the Sun Had Been” and further manipulates his classic sound on “Say I’m Not.” All in all, this disc is full of what you want from Jennings. To end on a pessimists tone, the album only has ten songs and lasts a mere 37.9 minutes. A big thanks to Reed for letting me burn it, nothing like free music and cheep booze.