Another stunning collection from Statesboro-via-Cambridge chocolate-voiced guitar maestro, Brooks Williams.  His first solo album in four years.

Release Date:  23^rd February 2024

Label: Red Guitar Blue Music

Formats: CD, Digital

It seems that Statesboro, Georgia-born, Cambridge, UK-based singer, songwriter and master of acoustic guitar in all its manifestations, Brooks Williams is seldom away from the pages of At The Barrier for very long.  In recent months and years, we’ve featured reviews of his collaborations with Aaron Catlow – Ghost Owl (2021) and Ready for the Times (2022), Dan Walsh – Fortune By Design (2022) and Rab Noakes – Should We Tell Him: Songs by Don Everly (2023); now, he’s back with us again, this time with his first entirely solo offering since his 2020 pair of albums, Work My Claim and Grant Avenue Tapes.

Brooks Williams is a phenomenon.  Martin Simpson has described him as “The real thing,” his soothingly-clear voice has been described as “like chocolate” and his guitar style as “jaw-droppingly effortless.”  Personally, I’d take things a lot further than that, but those descriptions will suffice for now.

Born and raised in the aforementioned Statesboro, Georgia – and he still has one foot firmly planted there, as more than one observer has been moved to remark – Brooks has been based in Cambridge for several years now.  His musical style combines strands of jazz, ragtime, blues, folk and country and he has released an almost unbelievable 30+ recordings since his 1990 debut album, North From Statesboro.  It has been commented that Brooks Williams was producing “Americana before it had been given the name…”

Let’s be clear: Diamond Days is a wonderful album.  It’s a collection that showcases all those highly-lauded attributes – the fluent guitar, the silky voice, the absorbing, storylike lyrics and the authentic, innovative, interpretations – to absolute optimum effect.  There isn’t a dull or disappointing moment anywhere in sight.  After the series of glorious collaborations, Diamond Days sees Brooks pared back to the way we know him best – just one man with his guitar.  But WHAT a guitar.

Big Sky – a ‘get away and start afresh’ song – sets the standard for Diamond Days, and it’s a standard that is never allowed to lapse.  The intricate guitar patterns are never allowed to get in the way of the crystal-clear vocals, and that’s useful, because he always has something interesting to say, and the overall effect is soothing and absorbing. 

Brooks plays a nice bluesy guitar figure for London Road, a song in which his lyrics eschew the glamour of London’s bright lights to focus, instead, on the darkness, dangers and desolation that descend upon the area around King’s Cross, once the commuters and revelers have gone home, before he moves on to classic Americana with his interpretation of Tom Waits’ Pony, a brilliant hobo story in which Brooks manages to convey the conflicting emotions of carefree joy and weary resignation.

And he tackles the well-known story that he’s turned into the captivating Palomino Gold with similar degrees of empathy and belief.  It’s a lovely story that will resonate particularly with the type of (now grown-up) lady who, as a girl, would imagine that she was on horseback, wherever she went.  As I’ve already remarked, Brooks never lets his guitar prowess get in the way of delivering a good story, but he really shows us all what he can do on the solo guitar instrumental, Stubble and Dust – and he does so in the controlled, measured way that many will recognize as the Brooks Williams signature style.

Brooks’ interpretations of other writers’ songs often add a new dimension, whilst invariably retaining respect for the writer’s original version and his take of Bob Dylan’s Nettie Moore is no exception to that rule.  The drama within the story is illuminated by slithery slides and emphatic strums of guitar and a thoroughly expressive vocal delivery, and Brooks’ slide guitar solo is glorious.

Inspired by the movie, Marianne And Leonard Words Of Love, On The Island recounts the story of the relationship between Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian paramour, Marianne Ihlen, on the Greek island of Hydra.  A song to sway and sing along to, it’s also highly atmospheric, as Brooks captures both the happiness of the time – the blue sea and sky, the ‘rainbow house’ and the lemon trees – whilst also conveying the enduring fondness of Cohen’s memories.  And we stick with the theme of commemoration for Bonnie Triumph, the story of the build-up to Evel Knievel’s (failed) New Years Eve 1967 attempt to jump the fountains at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas on his Triumph Bonneville motorcycle.  Brooks plays a suitably dramatic guitar figure as he tells the story of the build-up to the feat.  The story doesn’t actually get to the jump itself, but Brooks conveys the tension, the hope and the optimism that Evel is maybe going to pull it off…

Brooks’ ragtime guitar accompaniment to the traditional Train On The Island is magnificent – a showcase of part-percussive, part slide-laden rags that leave the listener bewildered, and it’s a shuffling, percussive style that also accompanies Anniesland, Brooks’ dedication to his erstwhile collaborator, Rab Noakes who, sadly, passed away in late 2022, just after completing the Should We Tell Him album with Brooks. 

Described as ‘A post US Civil War vignette,’ Gone And Done It Now is the lyrical and desolate story of a war veteran’s wanderings – wanderings that seem to have no ending and which offer no hope.  Once again, Brooks’ guitar phrasings are matched perfectly to where the song is up to, and he throws in some incredible inter-verse solos.  Hopelessness is also a theme of the otherwise bright and superficially optimistic Doing Fine.  In a song that is impassioned but not humourless, Brooks tries to convince himself that he’s over a sad breakup yet, despite the repeated entreaties that he’s “Doing fine,” he manages to make it abundantly clear that he isn’t. There could be no finer way to conclude this excellent album than with another burst of bluesy ragtime, and Brooks gives us exactly that with the traditional Ring Those Golden Bells.  It really is difficult to imagine anyone – even Ralph McTell – playing this stuff in a more engaging manner.  Brooks Williams is an acoustic guitar maestro.

Watch the official video of Brooks Williams performing his version of the Tom Waits song, Pony, here:

Brooks Williams online: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / YouTube / Bandcamp

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