Singer/songwriter Willy Mason has been writing and performing over the years, accruing the good faith and accolades of his fellow musicians, releasing an album with Conor Oberst's label Team Love (2004's Where the Humans Eat), and adding his vocals to Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan's 2010 album Hawk. With a voice as adenoidal as Jonathan Richman's but an adult worldview that relishes the paradoxes between fact and emotion, Mason signed up with producer Dan Carey, whose work with Kylie Minogue and Hot Chip provides an artful contrast to Mason's folk roots. Together, they create an album that's like a slimmed-down version of a Mitchell Froom production, with lots of strange mechanical beats intruding on the harmonies of the relatively straightforward "Talk Me Down." The opening track, "What Is This," benefits from the creeping atmosphere. "I Got Gold" lets Mason break his serious tone for a moment of joy, but the quiet guitar-mellotron title track features the intensity this brooding troubadour obviously prefers.