Plenty has changed in the ten years since Kathryn Williams released her first record, 1999’s Dog Leap Stairs, famously recorded for a large two figure sum (eighty quid). As the Liverpool-bred, Newcastle-based singer-songwriter releases her eighth studio album, she’s not only busier than ever, with several wildly varied projects in the pipeline, she seems at ease with a career that has had several ups and downs.
Brought up in a musical family, after studying art in Newcastle Williams stayed on, and frustrated by dealings with supposedly interested record companies that seemed set on changing her, she simply released her own album, also providing the cover painting.
“Ten years ago there weren’t many people putting out their own records. Then it was virtually unique, now it’s a given,” she ponders, considering a decade of changes.
“You’re not paying for warehouse time, which is good,” she says of the download revolution, practical knowledge learnt running her own label. On the other hand she compares the fashion for single track downloading to a newspaper article, equating the complete album to a book.
Even the way we listen to music has changed, as we all bumble around in headphones that isolate us from the world and each other. “It’s blocking one thing out to hear another and not getting the benefit of either,” says Williams.
Those highs have included an unexpected Mercury prize nomination for her self-released second album Little Black Numbers in 2000. She ended up with a major label deal and a national profile for the first time. She even took a couple of days off work to attend the awards bash. “I advised Chris Martin of Coldplay to spend less on recording, as he’d make more money in the long run,” she laughs.
Williams was literally thrust into the limelight, invited to play a Nick Drake tribute show at London’s Barbican “I’d only played to fifty people before that,” she recalls. She added backing vocals to John Martyn’s album Glasgow Walker and played solo at the Albert Hall. She was especially touched by her reception at 2009’s final Big Chill festival.
“I was waiting to go on at 1.30 in the afternoon and I could see crowds of people were coming. I got a standing ovation- what the fuck!” she says, delightedly.
Yet there have been lows to match. For years the agoraphobic Williams suffered chronic stage fright, until she became pregnant with her first child in 2005. (She’s expecting another next year)
“The paranoia subsided. I thought ‘I’ve got this thing inside me that’s more important than the fear of people booing and throwing things at me and walking out’
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It was the fear, not the reality,” she impresses, “I still get nervous, but nervous is a very different thing.” A leap to a major label for 2002’s Old Low Light proved more successful artistically than commercially.
Worn down by touring and disenchanted with music in general, the result was the fascinating covers album Relations, released in 2004, where
the honey-voiced Williams took on songs made famous by the rather throatier likes of Rod Stewart, Leonard Cohen and Kurt Cobain. The latter’s ‘All Apologies’ was a highlight, recast with a traditional folk arrangement. “It’s like singing a Nina Simone song, that complete disdain,” observes Williams, acutely.
Re-energised, 2005’s Over Fly Over and the following year’s Leave To Remain saw Williams back in a comfortable niche. But it was Two, 2008’s acclaimed collaboration with Neill MacColl, son of Ewan, that really raised her profile again. Defying categorisation, it switched between styles so comfortably it sounded like the work of old hands, rather than a couple who only met when they shared a bill. A follow-up is planned for next year.
Before that though comes The Quickening, her first release for One Little Indian. Recorded quickly with a crack team of deliberately underprepared musicians, it features songs to match any in her back catalogue, such as the loping opener ’50 White Lines’, an elegant road anthem featuring a countdown in the “low Welsh voice” of recording engineer (and local legend) David Wrench. Her own favourite is the lovely ‘Wanting and Waiting’ - “It’s the nearest I’ve got to a yearning love song. It’s not about unrequited love. Though I’m very good at those,” she deadpans.
It’s the first in a series of ongoing projects, such as a children’s record created with a friend and fellow mum who once sang in magnificently named punk band Delicate Vomit. “It’s not twee,” she promises, “We have a song called Hopscotch that sounds like Squarepusher.” (the mind boggles) Promised subjects include ‘things to do on a rainy day’ and ‘the sweet on the floor’.
Then there is the unlikely sounding band called The Ish Inventors, Let Williams explain. “Our manifesto is to patent our inventions through the medium of song. It took a really long night just to agree on that. But most if the songs are about how hard it is to invent something!” Sadly their concept of a literal ‘thinking cap’ has already appeared in the pages of New Scientist, devised by some nameless boffin. A record is promised next year, along with official releases of previously overlooked material and, for this acclaimed lyricist, the unusual task of setting folk singer and sculptress Marry Waterson’s words to music.
Williams has always evaded fickle fashion, her virtues more lasting and deeper. Many have thanked her for the comfort brought by songs like ‘Flicker’ (‘cause there’s not enough time for one man in one life’). “It’s been played at funerals,” she says soberly, “It’s overwhelming to know that.”
Her art background has given her a wider perspective, as well as a disdain for sonic correction programmes that allow you “to ‘re-draw’ a note on a computer with a ‘pencil’ ” She has compared the procession of writing music to painting, “I can do the sketches, but the painting is a different process. You’ll never get the picture you’d imagined. But as long as you can go with it, then you’ll be happy with it. It’s frustrating, but that’s how it is.”
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
