Product Description
Brand New ~ Sealed! Special “5th Anniversary” Pressing On Blue Vinyl, With Gatefold Cover. The Critically Acclaimed Sophomore Album From New Zealand Singer / Songwriter / Guitarist, Marlon Williams. Features Aldous Harding On “Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore”.
Known for his effortlessly distinctive voice, Marlon Williams marks his exponential growth as a songwriter with his second album, ‘Make Way For Love’. Throughout 11 original songs, he explores new musical terrain and reveals himself in an unprecedented way in the wake of a fractured relationship. While ‘Make Way For Love’ draws on Marlon’s own story, a new area for him after conscientiously not sharing his own life in song in the past, it captures the vagaries of relationships we’ve all been through: the bliss, ache, uncertainty, and bitterness. Like the best of breakup records, ‘Make Way For Love’ doesn’t shy away from heartbreak, but rather stares it in the face, and mines beauty from it. Delicate and bold, tender and searing, it’s a mightily personal new step. The album was recorded with producer Noah Georgeson and his backing band, The Yarra Benders, in North California’s Panoramic Studios after several weeks of pre-production in his native Lyttelton, with regular collaborator Ben Edwards. The finished result moves Marlon several paces from “country” — the genre that’s been affixed to him more than any in recent years, but one that’s always been a bit too reductive to be wholly accurate — with forays into cinematic strings, reverb, rollicking guitar and at least one quiet piano ballad.
‘Make Way For Love’ doesn’t shy away from heartbreak, but rather stares it in the face, and mines beauty from it. Delicate and bold, tender and searing, it’s a mightily personal new step for the Kiwi, and ultimately, on the record’s final, title track, Williams dusts himself off and is ready to move forward. Set to a doo-wop backdrop and in language he calls “deliberately archaic”, that superb voice sings: “Here is the will/ Here is the way/ The way into love/ Oh, let the wonder of the ages/ Be revealed as love”.
Side 1:
Come To Me
What’s Chasing You
Beautiful Dress
Party Boy
Can I Call You
Love Is A Terrible Thing
Side 2:
I Know A Jeweller
I Didn’t Make A Plan
The Fire Of Love
Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore (Featuring Aldous Harding)
Make Way For Love
AMG –
Williams has honed in on his greatest strength, which is his commanding voice -- it invokes names like Richard Hawley, Porter Wagoner, Chris Isaak, Lee Hazlewood, and Roy Orbison. The sophomore solo effort from the soulful New Zealand-based singer/songwriter, Make Way for Love dials back on the genre-hopping tendencies of Williams' 2015 debut in favor of a more streamlined -- though no less emotionally charged -- set of heavy-hearted retro-pop ruminations. Written in the wake of a breakup with fellow Kiwi crooner Aldous Harding, the 11-track set is awash in post-midnight reverb and spilling over with the myopic despondency of heartbreak. In jettisoning the frequent forays into bluegrass and country that dominated his debut, Williams has honed in on his greatest strength, which is his commanding voice -- it invokes names like Richard Hawley, Porter Wagoner, Chris Isaak, Lee Hazlewood, and Roy Orbison. The latter looms large throughout, especially on dusty jukebox weepers like "Come to Me," the lush and lonesome title track, and the powerful "Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore," the latter of which is a duet recorded with Harding post-breakup. The semi-raucous "Party Boy," a highway-ready '50s-style rave-up, attempts to inject a bit of sonic levity into the proceedings -- there's a fun "Telstar"-esque Farfisa moment that occurs about halfway in -- but it's no less mired in darkness than what preceded it. Heartache is likely the most mined substance in all of pop music, but Williams applies such panache to the material that it's hard not to get wrapped up in all of the delicious melodrama. Had he released Make Way for Love prior to the filming of David Lynch's 2017 return to Twin Peaks, he most surely would have been booked at the Roadhouse.