Next Wave #673: Marlon Williams

A frontiersman with an incredible sense of character...

Marlon Williams is a frontiersman. Musical from a young age, he grew up in the tiny town of Lyttleton, nestled away in the plains of New Zealand’s southern island. It’s there in his easy-going manner, his confident yet never ostentatious approach – and it’s there in his delivery, that ice cool take on Americana that never fails to stamp out its own identity.

Right now, Marlon Williams is playing it solo. His self-titled new album will gain full release through Dead Oceans, presenting the songwriter’s work to an international audience. A mixture of original material and carefully chosen covers, it’s a stark, engrossing, funny and tragic collection that it shot through with character.

“It was recorded back at my home town,” he reflects. “That's sort of where I've done all of my musical upbringing. All of my work has been done in Lyttleton. Just for familiarity's sake. I guess, the other reason I wanted to go back and do it there is that it's just such a disparate array of material, so I wanted someone who knows me and knows my wants and temperament, to try and wind it all in and make it a cohesive album, a cohesive work.”

Pausing, he adds: “I guess, the idea was that even though you're working in different genres, if you've got a strong, identifiable voice, then hopefully it'll do the work for you.”

It certainly does. Forced to work within some extremely tight time constraints, Marlon Williams responded with performances that quicken the pulse, which set nerves jangling, and tighten the chest. “I pretty much wrote them all in the studio, as I was recording. At the last second,” he remembers. “I'm not a very structured writer, so out of necessity I feverishly wrote something down.”

So does he thrive in that sort of environment? “Well, I work under pressure,” he smiles. “Whether I work well or not is not for me to say, but it's about the only time I ever actually do any work.”

Curiously, the material on ‘Marlon Williams’ was completed some time ago, with its initial release in the southern hemisphere being accompanied by a flurry of live shows. Now afforded a full international release, the singer is enjoyed delving further into the deepest emotional recesses of the material itself.

“I guess you just have to start looking more and more into the details of the songs. The real subtleties, the nuances of the songs,” he insists. “And I'm getting pretty good at finding hidden elements in my songs all the time. Just through repetition and transferring into a new venue, a new audience… it starts to feel different. If you're sensitive to them, then they'll change in front of your eyes.”

Forever shifting, forever the same, Marlon Williams is still out there, working on the frontier.

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'Marlon Williams' will be released on February 19th via Dead Oceans.

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