16-year-old Mason Ashley is wise beyond her years. The Magnolia, Texas native has had a way with music since she was a young child, being able to play music by ear on the piano from the age of seven. From nine came the guitar, after she rescued an old Conn that her grandfather was throwing out, and the following years involved endless writing and learning to play various other instruments including the ukulele. Inspired by love, relationships, life and the different people and cultures found on endless road trips taken by her family, Mason is world-weary before she’s even graduated high school.
It would be easy to compare her to Taylor Swift, and there are more than a few similarities to the pop superstar (when she was a similar age) in Mason’s debut EP ‘Into The Song’, but there are also marked differences. For a start, instead of channeling feisty country pop, Mason is far more comfortable settled into an Americana vein. Songs are more understated, less forthright, more considered. That’s not a slight on 16-year-old Swift, who clearly was immensely talented at such a young age, but a compliment to Mason, who shows not only a lyrical but also a musical maturity unheard of among her peers. Even ‘Sometimes Romance’, the most hooky, pop-orientated track on the EP, has a folky, alt pop charm and wit to it as she considers an on-again, off-again relationship from an adult perspective (even encouraging the boy to continue their casual affair as he dates other people).
This style of indie pop/Americana continues on ‘Death of Me’, a measured reflection on a cheating boyfriend in which she calmly asks him to leave and feels glad she saw the light, “goodbye, goodbye, please don’t pretend to cry, go plain and fair, please don’t pretend to care, now I see what I should have seen, you would have been the death of me.” Then there is the delicate folk ballad ‘Untied Ends’, a melancholic message to an old boyfriend whose relationship with her was complicated, told through the eyes of a new, healthier relationship. The strongest lyric on the record, she allows the complexities of her emotions to unfold, leaving us never quite sure whether she wants him back or not. To her, he represents a heartbreak without closure.
Yet despite having a wise-beyond-her-years sensibility, there remains an innocence to Mason’s songwriting and delivery that is beautiful and pure. This is particularly evident on the title track, where she asks the object of her affections to dance with her in a string-laden ensemble evoking the 1950s, complete with a vocal performance that betrays her youth. Delightfully, although she clearly holds a maturity in her music and writing, she isn’t afraid to let her guard down and embrace her young age. Opener ‘For A Moment’ is a lovely country folk number beset with fiddle, depicting young love lying out underneath the stars in a way that is genuine and not pandering to the girly bro-country market.
Mason Ashley may only be 16, but she has far more advanced songwriting chops than artists double or even triple her age. Her sound refuses to follow the crowd in terms of what her friends would be listening to, and she is extremely capable in terms of vocal interpretation and musicianship. It might still be early days yet, but I have no qualms in predicting that this girl is a star in the making.
Originally posted here.
