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In years to come, I'll look back at the records I've made and not have any regrets about a man in a suit making me fit in with fashion. They're small, sketchy pieces. I'm not trying to make Big Art.'
Kathryn Williams may not be trying to make Big Art. But, for many of us, the art she makes is as big as it gets. Its to do with the immensity of softly-expressed passions. Her ability to take an everyday observation, the kind of thing that might attract anyone's attention for an instant before we're distracted by all those Desperately Important Things we're busy with, and grab it from the ether, bring it down deep into herself, boil it down to its essence, and then send it back out, in a song that breaks your heart, with a voice that instinctively understands the power of restraint, of intimacy, of melody that drifts like thought, of lyric that pricks like a needle, or conscience, probably both. Back in the '70s black music day, the soul DJs would call it a 'Quiet Storm'... a slow, superficially mellow song that, when listened to at night, with a loved one, or alone, would punch way above its weight, and reveal itself as louder than a bomb. Kath Williams records, once one allows them in, are, like those Quiet Storm ballads, inclined to expose more grandiose gestures as the tossings of empty vessels.
No need to take my word for it. All you have to do is put on Kath's sixth album, 'Leave To Remain', released as (almost) always on her own Caw label. There have been big changes in the 32-year-old singer, guitarist and songwriter's life since 2004's major label covers album 'Relations', a period which included the appearance of 2005's excellent 'Over Fly Over' album. Positive changes, sure... but still the kind of changes which can either distract a creative type so completely they lose their muse, or disappear altogether. Thankfully for Kath addicts, these changes have had the opposite effect, and her new record, recorded over the last few months in Newcastle, Glasgow and London, is her best. Yep... even better than 2001's 'Little Black Numbers', the extraordinary second Williams album that bagged a Mercury Music Prize nomination, and that major label deal, with which we'll deal a little later. Indeed, 'Leave To Remain' is, according to the ever self-critical Kath, 'The one where, if it wasn't my voice, I could probably listen to it.'
Put on opener 'Blue Onto You' and the difference in tone is obvious and immediate. After firstly planning 'Leave To Remain' as a stark affair featuring her core band of Dave Scott (guitar) and Laura Reid (cello, keyboards), the Liverpool-born and Newcastle-based Kath brought onboard one Kate St John, former woodwind maestro of The Dream Academy, and string and woodwind arranger for the likes of Van Morrison and Roger Eno. She and Kath met when St John provided the arrangements for 2000's Nick Drake tribute concert at The Barbican, where Kath made her first major live appearance. 'After that show, we got to be friends,' Kath recalls, affectionately. 'I sleep on her couch when I come to London. She makes great pea soup.'
The pair got together with producer Darius Kedros and set about shining a bluer, fuller light on Kath's music... using a mini-orchestra of woodwind and string players, casting these haunting and increasingly sophisticated songs in hues that carry the unmistakable tang of classic '60s American pop, in a Jimmy Webb/Burt Bacharach vein. 'Kate brought all the musicians in together and we just miked everyone and up and played. It was like a cheaper version of Bacharach. Really exhilarating.'
Having been associated throughout her seven year recording career - which began with 1999's 'Dog Leap Stairs', legendarily made for the princely sum of £80 - with the English folk-pop tradition of Nick Drake, Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, Kath's happy to own up to her love of Americana. ''That's more what I grew up with than the English tradition. I was listening to Dylan and Joni Mitchell. This album is more like that. But I also love The Velvets and grungy New York stuff. The things that influence you aren't necessarily gonna come out in obvious ways, unless you're trying to copy. I don't sound like Lou Reed or Tom Waits. But when I listen to them, I learn.'
The songs on 'Leave To Remain' are her usual blend of character study and the more personal. ''Sandy L' is a character in my mind of a woman whose job is to let people watch her on a webcam. Then there's 'Stevie', which is about Stevie Smith, the poet. To me, she's like the female Ivor Cutler, in the way that I revel in the idea of creative people and that not being attached to this crazy thing of youth being the best. I love the idea of her writing poetry and being this eccentric individual, and that not waning as she gets older. I've always loved her poetry and her drawings. I played the Poetry Olympics at the Royal Albert Hall last year, and Michael Horowitz, who started the Poetry Olympics with Allen Ginsberg, had heard 'Stevie' and introduced me by saying; "This is someone's who's never met Stevie Smith, but has captured who she was, as a person, not just a poet." That was the biggest compliment! Some people want to meet David Beckham. For me this is way better.
'But the rest of the songs are more personal and I can see myself in them, even though they're not strictly about me. They're snapshots of things in me... memories, feelings.'
For example?
''Let It Happen', for example. My parents used to sponsor children in Africa when I was little. And my sister and me would get really excited about the blue air mail letters that would come back from the children. We'd get letters that would say, "I went to school today and I saw a lion and a giraffe on my way to school." And then they'd draw a lion. These were just daily things for them. So me and my sister would get really excited about the idea of a lion in our front room, curled up in front of the gas fire. Its just about that heavy sentiment you feel when you go home to where you're from. You know that there's a space there that used to be the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that you used to slot into. But you know you don't quite fit there anymore.'
Of such wistful rumination, KathSong is made. But, because of the intimacy of her voice and the way she performs, and her love of writing in the first person, people have a tendency to believe that all Kath's work is similarly taken from her own life.
'It's the myth of the woman, isn't it? When Mick Jagger sings 'Brown Sugar' people don't assume he's... oh, that's probably a bad example. But it is ridiculous. People forget that you are a writer, and you're not writing a diary. The most boring songwriters write songs like a diary. The whole point of writing for me is to try and reach things that are in me but don't necessarily happen to me. Whenever I try to explain the rules and regulations of my writing it all falls apart. But that's why I do it rather than explain it. If I could explain my needs and wants to other people I probably wouldn't want to write songs.'
'Leave To Remain' arrives at a point where singer-songwriters are big business, and where a folk revival, of sorts, is afoot. Does Kathryn Williams finally fit in?
'Ha! Its really funny. I'm six albums in, and I've been labelled in with the singer-songwriters, then with the NAM/New Acoustic Movement, then I was put in the Outsider group. Then I was shoved in with Dido and Norah Jones. And then it was KT Tunstall and Jem and all of that. I'm just in a car passing these things. If people wanna wave to me while I go past then that's fine. But I don't belong to any society. I don't go to any parties and meet these people. It's good, 'cos it tends to make people think I actually have friends in music.'
Kath, of course, does have friends in music. They just don't all happen to be Women Of Acoustica. She's recorded with Asian groovers Badmarsh And Shri (2001's 'Signs'), electronica bod Pedro aka James Rutledge, and, more recently, with Swedish artiste EP's Trailer-Park, and with Thea Gilmore, providing some vocals for her new album. She's also started a band. 'We're called The Ish Inventors... as in, 'Its kettle-ish', or, 'Its bird-ish.' We're three quarters of the way through an album. We have a manifesto and everything. Our manifesto is about trying to patent our inventions through the medium of song, but so far we've recorded seven songs about how difficult it is to invent something. It started off quite country, but now it sounds like Laurie Anderson. We've no idea how it'll all fit together. We've also designed a car that looks like a mother, to be driven by a Dad.'
This is perhaps the perfect place to suggest that Kathryn Williams doesn't see the world quite like anyone else. But then, geniuses rarely do. Nevertheless, the most profound changes in Kath's life are the kind that happen to most of us. She got married and, earlier this year, had her first son, Louis. One of the side benefits of this happy event has been the beginning of the end of Kath's crippling, vomit-inducing stagefright, a constant thorn in her side over the last seven years. 'After I released 'Over Fly Over' I toured solidly for three months. I decided to overcome my stagefright by hard graft. I toured for most of the time I was pregnant. When I first had Louis and was in the middle of the euphoria of him being born and feeling reborn - it was all a bit bloody S Club 7. I waited for the euphoria to go away and went back to work. But... fucking Hell... I never really felt like I was a woman before. I feel more comfortable expressing myself onstage, more spontaneous. I've lost a few inhibitions. And there's nothing like a human head coming out of your arse to put things in perspective.'
A sentiment we can all relate to, I'm sure you'll agree. But we're here to consider Kath's other new, less arse-related baby. 'Leave To Remain' is Kath's second album since leaving her East West/Warners and going back to her self-financed Caw label roots. And, unlike so many who have signed and parted with a major label and ended up all bitter and twisted, Kath sees the entire experience as nothing but positive, even when things got dark, as they did, for a while. 'I'm incredibly lucky to have been such a failure. Warners gave me a load of money to make some records that I had 100% creative control of. I'm still doing what I want. Most people don't know who I am, so I've not been panned yet. I'm just starting to get into my stride playing live, and I feel like I've honed everything. I'm a slow starter but its really getting there, and I'm still fresh to it. So I feel incredibly lucky to have not been a commercial success early on. I think it would've been the death of me. I almost quit music a couple of times when I was at Warners because of the pressure of feeling like a failure. It was a heavy load. Now, I feel inspired that I haven't crossed to the mainstream and what I'm doing hasn't been compromised. And that I've got to make this record.'
