Kathryn Williams @ the Bicycle Shop
The audience is totally enraptured with each song
Kathryn Williams' musical career and twelve album back catalogue may still be a secret to many, and in part is one of her own making (an agoraphobic fear of performing in public meant that she never really capitalised on her Mercury Prize nomination back in 2000 for Little Black Numbers). But The Bicycle Shop is completely sold out tonight. A consequence of her appearance at last summer's Wymondham Festival, or a response to the critically acclaimed album, Hypoxia, inspired by American poet and author Sylvia Plath's book The Bell Jar? Either way, I finally get to see an artist that I have admired for over fifteen years.
Furthermore, supporting Kathryn on this tour is another singer-songwriter from the shelves of my CD collection, Astrid Williamson, formerly of Goya Dress. Her gentle songs are delivered via guitar and sung with an earthy honesty. She draws material from albums as far back as 2006's Day of the Lone Wolf right through to new single Scattered, which is played on The Bicycle Shop's slightly out of tune piano, tucked just around the corner from the bar and thereby rendering Astrid temporarily out of sight to many of us.
Although advertised as Kathryn Williams' first solo tour in over ten years, Astrid is here to also provide piano accompaniment. Kathryn's guitar is abandoned only to loop vocals on Mirrors and replace the double bass line on Little Black Numbers. Several songs from 2013's Crown Electric are included but the evening belongs to Hypoxia, one of the most haunting and beautiful albums of 2015. A total of seven tracks are performed, including the drop-dead gorgeous Cuckoo, allegedly written in Ed Harcourt's bath. She obviously identifies closely with many of the themes, yet at the same time seems strangely unaware of just what a beautiful album she has created, and how the audience is totally enraptured with each song.
She is self-deprecating and almost fragile on stage. She identifies with the lone goldfish lit up in the Bicycle Shop's famous stage-side tank, yet manages to appear comfortable with her audience tonight. “Do you all come here often?”, she asks. “Do you always sit in the same seats?” Perhaps it is that air of safety and familiarity that allows her to make the offer to “come back here and sing to you again whenever you ask”.
Please do, Kathryn. Please do.
