After the first listen i was hooked. There's something about Bob's voice that works its way into me. The music is so simple yet so beautiful. I am addicted to this cd right now. Highly recommended.

Ever hear about those albums that people have found someplace in a used bin or something and it changed their life. Well, this lp didn’t exactly change my life but it did make me feel that I stumbled upon a little beautiful secret no one knows about. First of all the artwork on The Thinking Fireplace is really cool looking. It has this odd resemblance to some strange birdlike man I’ve seen in my dreams but I don’t know where or when or what is it. I really didn’t know what to expect from the music but once I heard the first plucked notes I sort of had a clue of what to expect. A traditional songwriter that would be boring and uninteresting. Sort of a bad version of Nick Drake or Elliot Smith but wait, the voice came in and I immediately got swept away . Bob Mason’s voice is kinda hard to explain . it’s gentle but powerful. It’s raw and on the verge of collapse . it’s sad but not crying in my drink sad but just sad . all music is sad , atleast to me it is. but anyway, throughout “The Thinking Fireplace” there are some really great songs. “Devil Knocks” has to be one of my favorites because of it’s powerful content. The singer or character is alone in a room with the devil knocking on his door as “the horses dreamed and I fell down to my knees / and screamed”. the way Putois explains it in the song is frightening and ends with the Devil “broke down my door / and threw me down to the floor / and put his cold hands around my neck / and looked me in my eyes” . it’s a pretty powerful point in the song and highlight of the cd. Bob’s lyrics do get a little stale at times, and are very simple almost too simple and so is his guitar playing ,but somehow his voice carries a sense of urgency and beauty to his little songs that most singer/songwriters just can’t do. When bob sings “when I sleep I sleep heavy / when I drink I shrink / and when I pray I don’t feel a thing / when I heard the sound of your voice / I heard the sound of love” he means it and it makes for a great song. I don’t know much about this guy or if he has more stuff out there to buy, but I would highly recommend The Thinking Fireplace if you like sad simple acoustic music that is powerful, sincere, and sort of mysterious.

It would be totally wrong in the eyes of the music world to call this emo, but this is a lot more emotional than most of the 'emo' out there today. Bob Mason and his acoustic guitar can make you mellow and sad. But it's a happy sort of sad, the one that you can't really put an explanation to. This album makes you feel good. And isn't that what music is supposed to do?

Bob is a true musician. His technical facility (a phrase that he would balk at, and quite rightly so!) derives in its entirety from his capacity to tease out glimpses--however fleeting, gorgeous, sad, or frightening they might be--of the world viewed through the lens of his perception. Whatever instrument he happens to be playing (and he's great not only at acoustic/whimpered vocals, as showcased here, but also at organ and don't get me started on his genius as an electric guitarist), he's always essentially doing the same thing. He is delivering an unfaltering vision of reality: with all of its quakes and bends and strides and missteps. There is something amorphous about and yet something that couldn't be sharper or more focused. Maybe what I'm trying to get at is that the arc of Bob's work takes you some where that is perpetually on the VERGE of snapping into focus. Like the few nanoseconds before a sexual peek, but extended into unblinking perpetuity. Imagine that cascading weirdness, that synergy of anticipation and the cognizance of the lie that feeds our perception that there is something to anticipate. Buy this CD, but hope that Bob will soon release something featuring his Kevin Shields-like genius on electric. And no, I'm not overdoing it when I name check My Bloody Valentine's mastermind. Bob's that good.