Kathryn Williams // The Quickening

‘The Quickening’ is Kathryn William’s eighth studio album, which was surprising as it’s the first release of hers that I'd heard anything about. The album was recorded ‘in four days, all live, three takes maximum’, Kathryn told Mojo Magazine earlier this year – impressive stuff. The album is a perfectly good acoustic offering, along the lines of many female singer-songwriter types around in the current musical climate; tracks like ‘Just Leave’ are dainty enough to be mellow and utterly simple, as well as relatively interesting for the music of this genre. Each song is pretty, charming and dapper; ‘Just a Feeling’ and ‘Noble Guesses’ demonstrate the feel of the whole album well. The issue I have with this, however, is that it lacks edge. The nu-folk acoustic feel of so many female artists releasing music at the moment - from Laura Marling to Emmy the Great to Blue Roses to Alessi’s Ark – encompasses a distinctive beauty with an image-filled and sometimes rather daring lyrical offerings. Kathryn Williams lacks this, and I think it would do her well to introduce a bolder layer to her song writing. Nevertheless, ‘The Quickening’ is a perfectly lovely album with a lot of good points to note – it just seems her songs might get lost in the acoustic female singer-songwriter category of 2010.