Steve Mason with Joe Duddell and ensemble at The Barbican, London – review

Over the course of a 20-year career, former frontman of The Beta Band, Steve Mason, has cemented a reputation as a songwriter of rare ability, adventure and insight on the human condition.

Confessional songs of love, loss, protest and his battles with depression use a patchwork of genres – folk, electronica, dub – to create melancholic beauty and a brand of off-kilter pop that is recognisably his own.

Three successful solo albums, particularly last year’s superb Meet The Humans, seems to have heightened Mason’s self-assurance.

Mason, who once impetuosity decried The Beta Band’s full-length debut as “a crock of shit”, is now so surefooted as to present an expansive career-spanning set with a widescreen Barbican backdrop, complete with a bells and whistles ensemble led by collaborator, composer and musician Joe Duddell.

The two hour set is a celebration of his vision. There is uplifting folk pop (the Scottish referendum-baiting “Alive”), desolate balladry (the heartbreaking “Ran Away”), and several moments that overtly display how composite Mason’s songwriting is.

Opener, “It’s Not Too Beautiful”, breaks down a krautrock-ish riff with sweeping film-noir-soundtrack strings and back again (“we figured if we could do that we could do anything”); similarly, “Hardly Go Through” builds to a sprawling soundscape that washes over the hall like Spiritualized at their most elegiac.

Tonight’s highlights come immediately after an intermission via a selection of tracks where Mason is accompanied by the orchestra alone.

The fragility to “I Let Her In” and “Dr Baker”, Mason’s affecting voice sparsely accompanied by violin and harp respectively, and the delicate melodicism of “Come To Me”, carry such emotional heft it renders the hall pin-drop silent. The yang to that yin is The Beta Band’s euphoric alt-pop anthem “Dry the Rain”: such is Mason’s skill he pulls off both convincingly.