Album: Kathryn Williams

Old Low Light, Caw/Eastwest

On this follow-up to her Mercury prize-nominated Little Black Numbers, Kathryn Williams applies a subtle, measured approach to songs whose ambiguities linger long after they've finished. Employing restrained folk-jazz settings in which her own guitar picking and hints of piano, horns and strings ride the elastic yawn of Jonny Bridgwood's double bass, she reveals lives stained by regret or failure or rejection: lonely, wounded souls thrown off-kilter by emotional disruption, uncertain how to respond to circumstances. Troubled figures like the girl in "Beatles", who "found out if she took off her clothes, she could score men by embarrassment"; the obsessive stalker in "Wolf", who "sit[s] around wanting her to want you back"; and the rejected lover in "On For You" who "watch[es] the last light turn off in your flat and silence the town", unaware of how close to the sinister "Wolf" s/he is becoming. Odd, discomfiting observations lurk round every corner – "Moonlight is so overrated/ Complete darkness is so abrasive"; "I made The Beatles appear out of nowhere"; "Everywhere, tradition draws circles to define" – their impact muted by the warmth of arrangements which occasionally recall the latin pop of Astrud Gilberto. Which is not to say that Williams plays things too safe; portents abound throughout Old Low Light in the poignant flugelhorn, the grim drone of cello and the wash of traffic noise – and certainly, anyone who opens their album with two minutes of just voice and pulsing double bass, as she does here, has to have a courageous confidence in her material. Recommended.