MUSIC REVIEWS

“I think the best thing you learn in life is that if you can sit comfortably in peace alone without anything, without having to watch the TV or having to go to the pub or having to be around someone else, if you can just be completely at peace with who you are and what you have, then you’re winning at life.”

keep on being this shape-shifting, ever-growing, ever-evolving thing,”, Mason states, illuminating the process behind ‘Moral Panic’s creation with his bandmates, the guitarists Joe LangridgeBrown and Dominic Craik, the latter also taking on the spot as the record’s co-producer next to the legendary Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, The 1975). “Dom musically is the forefront of the band, he’s the fngers on the post. But if we let one of us do it all solely, it wouldn’t work. If it was just me, it would be all emotion and soul. And if it was Dom, it would be clever and intricate. And Joe is really classic. The three of us are completely diferent people with diferent personalities and emotions. And that pushing forward from those three diferent places creates this unique music, this melting pot of us.”

Despite the group’s successful history and resulting en masse of confdence, there are still milestones to reach and goals to achieve. The kind of events that you never forget, no matter how famous or popular you are. In the case of Nothing But Thieves, one of those defning moments came in the form of a recent live performance of their heart-wrenching ballad ‘Impossible’ at the monumental Abbey Road Studios together with a 50-person orchestra. A place frontman Mason purposely had never visited and held sacred until then, always waiting for their own invitation to come around. “That recording was a dream, a bit of a daze, really. You’re in this place with all of this history that is literally in the oils of the 100-year-old furniture you’re sitting on. It’s like “who the fuck sat on this before me?”. It’s unbelievable,”, the singer remembers, quickly turning onto a new page, his next milestone – their headline show at the famous O2 Arena in London, scheduled for October next year. “I don’t know what I’ll be for that show, I’ll be a huge ball of emotions. I was thinking about it the other day and just thought, Jesus Christ, I’ll probably be crying my eyes out. Because it is the childhood dream for me. For most bands it’s Wembley, but being from Essex, it’s always been the O2. It’s where I saw my frst concerts and I remember being there when I was really young and going “mum, I can do this, I can do it better than that”. I really believed in myself and I still do. So to play the O2 will be the end of that childhood dream. I’m going to have to go and get myself a new one after that.”

“I think sometimes silence makes the best creations. // People who have sport, they run and they feel better. I sing and I feel better.”

And what would that new dream be? “I guess it would be to be able to do all these amazing shows and to keep it alive and together while also having a family. Because in the end, the only thing that matters is the connections you make, whether it’s with yourself or other people or love and loved ones. But people forget that. All of their stupid lives and their distractions will get on top of it like dirty laundry. So my message to people would be – you have a real connectedness with someone, whether it’s with your friend or a loved one or a partner or a pet or family, so don’t let the commotions of your life get in the way of that, because that’s the only thing that actually has any substance. Everything that you can see in front of you will physically fade away, whereas the connections you make can’t unless you make them do so. Anything materialistic, fnancials, it doesn’t matter,”, Mason explains, while also coming back to the importance of self-love – a topic the artist has spent a lot of time thinking about during lockdown, inspired by stoicism, a philosophy that revolves around minimising the negative emotions in your life and maximising one’s gratitude and joy. “I think the best thing you learn in life is that if you can sit comfortably in peace alone without anything, without having to watch the TV or having to go to the pub or having to be around someone else, if you can just be completely at peace with who you are and what you have, then you’re winning at life. That’s really the meaning of life, it’s having that self-peace and connectedness with yourself and then hopefully connecting with other people.”

It’s a level of wisdom and profoundness that you usually wouldn’t expect to come from a 27-yearold guy, sitting there in a baggy jumper and playing around with a tin of Vaseline. But that is exactly why the talented Brits have been able to break through the walls and endless amounts of bands out there – it’s their sense of self-awareness, relatability, and utter originality that cannot be imitated. It has to come from the heart. And if there is one thing this group has, it’s that. In a world that couldn’t possibly be any darker than it is right now, they have managed to create an expressive little work of art that serves as a monument for the time it was birthed into. And while this might feel like the end, Nothing But Thieves know it’s not. There is always light at the end of the tunnel, you just need to break through the fog to see it.