KATHRYN WILLIAMS - Over Fly Over

With her fifth album, England's Kathryn Williams continues to travel the roads of intimate, refined singer-songwriter craft. It's a path that has seen her mature enormously, both compositionally and as a performer, since her debut “Dog Leap Stairs” (1999) – when the ghost of the most acoustic, spartan Nick Drake still kept her company. “Over Fly Over” is, accordingly, a work rich in nuance, where the melodies rest on instrumental backdrops always finished with taste and never overdone. You can sense the sweet scent of her graceful, melancholy femininity; a scent that gathers these 12 songs into a light but firm embrace.

On “Indifference #1”, sumptuous acoustic-celestial architectures, dancing a slow-motion round, send out nostalgic echoes recalling Turin Brakes, though winning out more decisively in terms of inspiration. Ballads that captivate within seconds (“Three”), crystalline emotion (“City Streets”) and wounded innocence (“Beachy Head”, smoothed by a muted trumpet): all of it delivered on tiptoe, with a gaze that catches the lyricism in seemingly useless things, confined to their black silence. In this dimly lit world, love takes on austere tones, like the violin hissing far off in “Breath”.

There's a faint whiff of tragedy behind so much sweetness. Something that only those who have loved the work of Lisa Germano can begin to imagine. Eyes closed, walking incredulous into the unspeakable beauty of “Old Low Light #2”: brushed-away, electric dispersions of notes, imaginary landscapes. Moments of total disenchantment and surrender, interspersed with eccentric, well-arranged numbers like “Just Like A Birthday”.

There's also room for the flower-power pop of “Shop Window”, complete with sixties-toned organ. On “Escaping” and “Just Like Birthday”, the arrangements grow more complex, betraying a will to work toward a singer-songwriter piece built on the interplay of multiple instruments (bass clarinet, cello, flute, flugelhorn, etc.), whose timbres waver within smoky, almost noir atmospheres. Following in the footsteps of another of her reference points, Joni Mitchell, Williams crosses the finish line on “Baby Blues” with a well-crafted pop-jazz, while “Full Color” and “Until The Dark” renew a fragile, delicate example of chamber music, capable of evoking the same ghosts of heart and soul found in the work of Colleen. Granted, not with the same aching poetic force, but it's undeniable that this “Over Fly Over” – despite a certain underlying static quality – is still a work capable of keeping you company. Perhaps on those nights when the grey emptiness of the soul stands in counterpoint to the vibrant stillness of the stars.

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30/04/2026