KATHRYN WILLIAMS - Mystery Park

Sixteen albums in a twenty-five-year career haven't been enough to make English singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams a household name beyond her own country. Always one of the most refined voices on the English folk scene, Kathryn has preserved a more intimate, cultured musical profile: her songs contain almost none of the bucolic, at times arid imagery typical of many folksingers, and accordingly her albums move along lines that intersect with Nick Drake, Lisa Germano, Colleen, Hope Sandoval and Susanne Vega.

“Mystery Park” stakes its claim as the songwriter's best album since “Little Black Numbers”, another chapter to add to a list of precious records that includes “Over Fly Over”, “Old Low Light” and “Crown Electric”, even if it's unlikely to make much of a dent in a record industry that still favours style and social-media clout (indecency, really) over substance (just compare this album with the admittedly interesting “Euro Country” by CMAT to grasp the difference).

What Kathryn Williams never lacks is personality (just listen to the splendid version of Python Lee Jackson's "In A Broken Dream" included on the album "Relations"), but above all a songwriting skill that lets her craft crystalline, flowing, inspired melodies that grab you instantly: the opening track of the new album "Thoughts Of My Own" is a shining example of this.

It's no coincidence that Kathryn Williams once again called on Ed Harcourt to join her on this new venture, a songwriter with whom she shares almost the same fate, given the scant attention paid to the Wimbledon singer-songwriter's excellent recent albums too. Harcourt's isn't the only outside contribution, though: the too-easily-forgotten Polly Paulusma delivers two smooth, sweetly bittersweet moments in "Goodbye To Summer" and "Tender", while Paul Weller has fun on the Hammond organ in the splendid ballad "Gossamer Wings", co-written with Kathryn, one of the most intense pages of an album as spare as it is rich in musical suggestion.

"Mystery Park" is a poetic record but never cloying: even when Williams tells family stories (the fragile "Sea Of Shadows", dedicated to her elder son Louis, and the delicate "Servant Of The Flame", written for her younger son Ted), harmony and lyrical skill keep any sentimental drift in check, favouring a poetic whisper over emphasis that recalls Paul Simon and the Nick Drake of "Bryter Later".

One last well-deserved mention goes to Leo Abrahams, the skilled finishing touch on a record as intense as it is elegant and essential. The perfect interplay of piano and strings underpinning the album's most spiritual moment, "Knew You Forever", and the fluid, harrowing emotional crescendo of "This Mistery", which Kathryn dedicates to her father suffering from dementia, are just two examples of the deft framework the English composer and producer provides to round out a project perhaps destined for unjust media oblivion, but one that will captivate the most attentive listener.

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22/01/2026