Kathryn Williams claims her due stake, with the classiest suite of songs yet.

Release Date : 26th September 2025

Label : One Little Independent Records

Format : CD / Vinyl / Digital

“Dappling shadows dancing on the ground. Is it snow or blossom? Is it leaves or light dancing?” These are Williams own words, in the sleeve notes, introducing this, her sixteenth album since 1991. And, you know, she has captured it. Perfectly.

ICY COLD WARMTH

Can it really be last century that this she first came to attention, grabbing ears with the icy cold warmth of her voice? Icy cold warmth? I know, but bear with me, as she really does occupy that mysterious place where the two become one. Like when you plunge your hands into a mountainside stream, in the depths of winter. Whilst she has explored many avenues and several collaborations over that quarter century, this sees the closest to a return to the delicate fragility of her earliest works, if allowing some rounding out of the sounds available to her in the studio. And she remains unafraid of revisiting some of those collaborations, with over half these songs co-writes, co-writes with those she trusts to not tinker with her own crystalline template. I defy you you to tell where the joins are.

She has a pattern for preparation that involves notebooks, collecting fragments of inspiration, informed by working with poets. Sharing intimacies with her closest friends, their contributions allow the perspectives shared a deeper horizon, a sky always red at night, howsoever the day.

A BRIGHT STAR IN THE SKY

Thoughts Of My Own opens, the title reflecting that this one is all her own, and, as to a bright star in the sky, you are drawn immediately to her voice, as it emerges from a bed of tinkling guitars, picked and strummed. As she describes sitting alone, with those thoughts, she triggers off those of your own. She is allowing you to share her solitude, but not to disturb her. Keyboards hum and shimmer and it is altogether beautiful, especially as it ends, suddenly, and without any warning.

“Golden September“, so round about now, is invoked in The End Of Summer, a song that grabs that moment, long days turning slowly to chill. Written with Polly Palusma, who also adds guitar and backing vocals, there is a sad bucolity in this one, contrasting opposites remaining a prerequisite in Williamsland. Woozy keys swirl and a piano adds some full fat notes. Producer, Leo Abrahams seems to be responsible for much the backing instrumentation across the whole project, picking up guitar, keyboards, piano, hurdy gurdy, ukelele and bass, but his lightness of touch at the console makes the individual sounds deliberately indistinct, seeking for the overall atmosphere. You can hear them all, clearly, but you can’t always distinguish the source and you don’t need to be. Save your concentration for the voice and voices.

GUESS THE GUEST

A possibly unexpected guest pops up for “Gossamer Wings”. Wings are always gossamer in song, but seldom is that extreme lightness and sheerness so well evoked. Fingerpicked guitar provides a scaffold for Williams to weave her vocal web, with an organ trilling long and slow behind her. A lower voice drops in beside her, as piano provides further ballast. Both complex and transparent, the song is a shared write with that guest, also on organ and additional vocal, who is Paul Weller. Complexity then steps back some for the second Palusma contribution, with just voice and guitar, at least to start, until an ethereal chorale come in, midway.

Can sirens draw the unsuspecting into other than the rocks and tragedy? If so the lure here feels more toward a life of lotus eating, at odds, perhaps, with the lyrics, unless that’s the point. “Every silence that falls, I’m feeling it all.“

Ed Harcourt, another of William’s cabal of familiars, is featured in the next two tunes. Whilst written by and still unmistakably Williams, there is a whiff of languid country guitar about the first, This Mystery, together with some restrained percussion from Chris Vatalaro. Harcourt plays piano and what is described as mariachi bass. It is as if, sated with lotus, the offering is now for something long, smooth and alcoholic, a desert sundowner.

As she croons wordless da da das, misgivings, always misgivings, arise as “even love cannot complete this mystery”. Sea Of Shadows, written with Abrahams and Neill MacColl, also on guitar, it feels like the morning after, the mystery(s) now “worn like deputies“. Me neither, but is all sounds lovely, a slow harmonium like drone bedding down the flickering guitars, and Williams sounding never so alone.

A PRAYER FOR CONNECTION

Are we still in the desert? The slow maudlin harmonica, from David Ford, that beckons in Move Me suggests so. Written in hand with Beth Neilson Chapman, this is a slow plea, a prayer possibly, for connection. Vataro’s drumming is a steady insistent patter and, with lines like “you always said my smile was a heavy crown“, one worries as to quite what absolution is sought. The guitar flickers and flutters, and, as the beat becomes more emphatic and echoed, you cannot not be moved.

If this is sounding overbearingly doomy and gloomy, it isn’t, but the set then does benefit from the sharper thrust of Personal Paradise. OK, the content may still be other than upbeat: this paradise is outside the walls of everybody else’s, but it is as if Abrahams has suddenly found some new studio toys to play with. Taking a moment to appreciate, it is ukelele that is providing the picky click of accompaniment, intermittent rainstorms of drumming vie with a shimmering keyboards and electric guitars. Williams has slipped into a keening mode, a colour new to her palette, and the song becomes progressively Waterloo Sunsetty, as if Ray Davies were tackling that Amen Corner song about another Paradise. The same sort of aspiration, too, sort of, except Williams prefers solitude.

CARTE BLANCHE

That having cleansed the palate, it is as if carte blanche has now been offered to explore other wayward territories. And If Knew You Forever seems to glide back in with a reprise of sonics before, listen harder. Over a wash of strings, from Emma Smith, this song is a celebration, a nameless dedication. Never mawkish, the lyric is sufficiently vague as avoid sentimentality. With a repeating guitar and piano motif, it may be one of Williams finest songs yet.

Sunsets is a further collusion with MacColl, seldom far from the Williams circle since their shared album, Two, in 2008. Another sidestep, this is a frothy and infectious confection, drenched in strings sufficient to close the credits of some up budget Busby Berkeley, if with the Turtles songbook. More muscular drums and some flashes of Gilmour-esque guitar, however, apply additional character. Extraordinary, with added do be dos, to boot.. This is just the sort of joyful fillip to allow the majesty of the closing track to fully seep in.

ONE OF HER BEST ANd ONE IN THE EYE

Servant Of The Flames has been widely broadcast as being to and about her son, possibly, I wonder, also the recipient of And If I Knew You Forever? With a mix of picked chunky guitar, strings, vibes and what may well be theremin, this is one of the undisputed highlights here. If the arrangement catches your imagination, the melody catches your ear and won’t let go. A stunning finale. “Again and again and again” it ends. Yes please.

In a week when so many potential poll winning albums have shuffled forward, at once and all together, lo and behold, here’s yet another one. Certainly one of her best, and one in the eye for anyone thinking collaboration is a sign of a waning muse. Nothing could be further from her truth.

Let’s explore that Personal Paradise alluded to. (Don’t miss the namecheck of beloved hound Lucy, a sketch of whom appears on the back of the sleeve notes).

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