astrid williamson: day of the lone wolf

It’s been 10 long years since Shetland-born singer Astrid Williamson struck out on her lonesome, forsaking the safety in numbers afforded by indie duo Goya Dress in which she provided the lush, hypnotic vocals. That decade has seen her put in a number of guest appearances and a pair of solo excursions: one on Nude Records, the other self-produced and distributed through the mighty BMG machine. Day Of The Lone Wolf finds Williamson taking the DIY route once again under the auspices of her own label, Incarnation, with indie stalwart One Little Indian taking care of getting it out there.

These days, DIY is no longer necessarily equated with slapdash bodgery or hissy four-track production. Day Of The Lone Wolf is as sumptuous an aural experience as any bigger budget offering and as insightful a soundtrack to 21st Century living as an entire library of US TV series spin-off compilations. On a cursory listen, and as is certainly implied by the title, these intelligent contemporary pop songs hint at a confident, selfreliant woman negotiating her way through a post-’Sex In The City’ climate with predatory confidence. But Williamson’s songs deserve more serious consideration and scratching beneath the hide of the album sees the veneer of the hunter stripped right back, exposing the loneliness and solitude of a life separated from the comfort and support of the pack. Suddenly the noble hunter seems a little less majestic, rather more flawed, dysfunctional and unfulfilled — and perfectly in tune with life in the urban landscape.

‘Siamese’ kicks off proceedings in a muted manner, musing on the nature of connection and trust. It’s just a little too reminiscent of Laura Veirs’s ‘Galaxies’ but sets the ensuing emotional tone quite nicely. But not just yet; the wistfully uplifting ‘Superman 2′ (the sequel to a song on her previous album) bursts into life after a brief string intro, driven along by fluid piano and charming Wurlitzer. Like Lois Lane jumping into Niagara Falls on faith in her hero alone, Williamson concludes that sometime it’s best to leap headlong into love and to hell with the consequences. ‘Reach’ brings the tone back down with bare acoustic guitar showing that Astrid’s no slouch on the six-string either, her equally exposed vocal counterpointing ‘Superman 2’s veiled optimism. ‘Amaryllis’ continues in a similar vein, her half-whispered vocal teetering on the edges of perception.

Williamson has often courted controversy with her lyric writing, but while ‘True Romance’s striking couplet “Look at me and think of this / all my tangled hair across your hips” has been hotly debated, the song’s meaning goes far beyond veiled oral sex references to explore the twin fires of obsession and dependency. Other highlights include the perky ‘Shh…’ (surely a future single?), the Brion-esque piano étude of the instrumental ‘Carlotta’, and the stunning standout ‘Tonight’, a tender and sensitive plea for companionship.

The informal trilogy of ‘Another Twisted Thing’, ‘Forgive Me’ and ‘Only Heaven Knows’ dares to ask some of life’s bigger nagging questions (no, not whether Brandon Routh makes a better Man of Steel than Christopher Reeve), the latter bowing out with a mixture of cynical resignation and contentment with circumstance. The lyric “sometimes your beauty suffocates me, but I would gladly die and repose” makes for a fitting conclusion to an album of exquisitely beautiful uncertainty. Day Of The Lone Wolf sees Williamson growing ever more confident in bending to meet her muse and in her abilities as an artist. Even if this isn’t the album to establish her as a major talent, all the evidence points to Astrid finally having her day in the not-too-distant future.

[One Little Indian; January 1, 2006]

Written by: Trevor Raggatt

Tags: astrid williamson, day of the lone wolf

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 5:17 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.