In a musical era where commercialism reigns and popular songs are digitally altered to the point of barely resembling music, Mason Jennings is the antidote.

The Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter rocks out on stage with an acoustic guitar and sings songs about love, politics and history.

“I like to make sure that we’re creating live music on stage,” Jennings said in a recent interview with The Badger Herald. “There are no computers playing tapes or back-up stuff. I just want it to be organic and that’s not too popular these days as far as what people are doing.”

With bassist Robert Skoro and drummer Noah Levy filling out Mason Jennings’ band, the trio unabashedly swims against the current of trite predictability. Its brand new album, Century Spring, follows on the heels of the immensely well-received, heavily political disc Birds Flying Away.

With two years between the albums, the mood is quite divergent. Century Spring is a quieter, more pensive album. It is full of love songs ranging from overly saccharine, Hallmark-commercial sweet to hauntingly poignant.

“I’m getting married this year and that was pretty much the pervasive theme of my last year, so the album just kind of came out like that,” Jennings said.

The disc kicks off with the upbeat ode to friendship,”Living in the Moment.” The high energy continues with “New York City,” an extraordinarily catchy song celebrating a relationship while paralleling it with the greatest city in the world. In the head-bobbing, hooky refrain, Jennings sings, “I’ve got your back from now on baby, you can count on me.”

Jennings proves his prowess on piano as well as guitar on the languid and lovely “Forgiveness.” Skoro accompanies Jennings on harmony in this song as well as many others. Over their years together they have developed a complementary synergy.

“Bullet” departs from the “bliss of love” theme and provides a sarcastic little rant. This song is not new — fans have been jamming to it at concerts for years — but this is its first album appearance. It’s common to hear a crowd exercising catharsis and singing along with Jennings on “Bullet” as he says, “Hold it, this song is a scream / funny like our lovin’ doused in gasoline / funny like a bomb between my teeth when we kiss / you pulled out the pin with your own sweet lips.”

Unfortunately, at just over 32 minutes, Century Spring is short — as soon as the disc enraptures the listener it abruptly ends. Jennings opted to exclude some excellent new material from this album. He explained his reasoning: “When I release a record, I try to have it be a body work that kind of comes from the same time to make it more like a unified thing. Also, I like to keep some of the songs to play live.”

Since his self-titled debut album six years ago, Jennings has been amassing fans and respect. He has grown comfortable with himself as a musician, which is evident in his recordings and stage presence. “Stuff has sort of started to roll so it feels like less pressure in a weird way. I guess I know now that I can make music for a living, and that was the biggest stress of not having any money and needing to go way in debt to even go on tour,” Jennings said.

Luckily, Madison will soon have the opportunity to see Mason Jennings in concert. He plays the Barrymore Friday, as the first stop on a national tour to promote the new disc. The show is billed as a CD release party.

Jennings is not carried by a major label, mainly because he doesn’t want to be. Therefore, his discs can be rather hard to find at times and the Barrymore show is an excellent chance to snag the albums. Jennings recently started his own label, Architect Records, to release Century Spring.

“The thing that’s so hard about the industry right now is that the major labels are looking for you to sell millions of records and they don’t want anything to do with you if you don’t. I hope that people realize that every record that they sell is really important — just to go out and do that and make music for a living on your own. You don’t have to sign and you don’t have to sell a million records to be important,” he explained.
In a smothering atmosphere of insignificant and forgettable profit-monger pop stars, Mason Jennings is a welcome breath of fresh air.