Where the Humans Eat is the first full-length album released by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 Willy Mason

Willy Mason

Willy Mason is an American singer-songwriter.- Early life :He was born in New York, the son of Jemima James and Michael Mason, both folk singers. When Mason was five, he and his family moved from New York to West Tisbury, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard...

. It was recorded in Catskill, New York

Catskill (town), New York

Catskill is a town in the southeast part of Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 11,775 at the 2010 census. The western part of the town is in the Catskill Park....

 in early May 2004. Songs were mostly recorded live, and feature Mason singing

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

 and playing guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 (adding cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

, and vibraphone

Vibraphone

The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....

 in the studio), and his younger brother Sam on drums. Mason wanted to capture the atmosphere of a live performance in the recordings, and tried to avoid re-recording songs: “I made a rule that we couldn’t record any of the songs in more than three takes. It allows you to make mistakes and accept those mistakes. Listening back, sometimes the wrong notes are the best parts of the song, the imperfections are what keeps it spontaneous and live-feeling."

The album's two singles, "Oxygen" and "So Long", charted on the UK Singles Chart

UK Singles Chart

The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

, and the album reached #38 on the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

 in 2005. The song "Oxygen" was covered

Cover version

In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

 by the opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

tic soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...

 on her 2010 album Dark Hope

Dark Hope

Dark Hope is a 2010 album of indie rock titles sung by operatic soprano Renée Fleming.The album was the idea of Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein; after listening to Fleming's performance of "In the Pines" on Elvis Costello's TV show Spectacle, they approached Fleming and producer David Kahne...

.

This album is the second release of Team Love Records.

Track listing

1. Gotta Keep Movin'
2. All You Can Do
3. Still a Fly
4. Where the Humans Eat
5. Fear No Pain
6. Hard Hand to Hold
7. Letter #1
8. Sold My Soul
9. Our Town
10. So Long
11. Oxygen
12. 21st Century Boy