My Boy. Marlon Williams

Sweet pop simply rolls out of my speakers when I put on Marlon Williams' new album My Boy. The music of ages presents itself to me. The title song is a song that could have in more or less the same form have been released by any of the better singer-songwriters dabbling in pop music in the late 70s. Andrew Gold, Rupert Holmes, Christopher Cross, you name it.

Marlon Williams is a singer-songwriter from New Zealand who became well-known immediately with his first album and moved to the west soon after. Before the pandemic he was back on his home turf and got stuck. So he started work in the relative isolation of the island nation in the Pacific. The result is a work that sounds über relaxed and laidback. All urgency has gone out of his music and tensions mostly laid down by the wayside. The country influences of his debut album from 2015, 'Marlon Williams', have all been replaced by pop music with a melancholy undertone. This is almost another artist.

So for some people this may come as a shock. I welcome his new persona as an artist. The singer Marlon Williams is there, his suave voice remains intact of course. The way he uses it, like in the almost too sugar-coated 'Princes Walk' is extremely mellow and old-fashioned. Singers from well before my time sang this way and Ray Davies when he was really laying it on, as in one of the songs on 'Schoolboys In Disgrace'.

Another, more recent name that can be mentioned is Jack Johnson. Marlon Williams finds his groove with ease, e.g. in 'Don't Go Back. The addition of almost disco like background vocals, think Kool and the Gang, is a huge surprise. What also is, is De Kift percussion and atmospherics. I'm near certain that Williams will never have heard the Dutch band's album 'Gaaphonger (1996) about the winter stranded Dutch sailors had to spend on Nova Zembla in the late 16th century. An album full of sounds coming with a harsh winter. One guitar loop sounds very familiar. You can hear it in 'Modern Crystals' though, before the song takes a different corner fast.

My Boy just as easily creates a more modern sound, like the Belgian band Balthazar lays down. The album is full of musical surprises from decades gone and from today. This results in synths creating a wide ranging mood and modest, yet modern rhythms. 'Thinking Of Nina' is the kind of song that will appeal to many pop fans of this decade. Marlon Williams lays bridges for music fans to cross from one era to another at their leisure.

My Boy is many things but above all an album by a singer with a love for pop music and the talent to write the songs to go with that love. It shines through in all eleven songs on My Boy. A joy to listen to this album is.

Wout de Natris

 

You can listen to and order My Boy here:

https://marlonwilliams.bandcamp.com/