Kathryn Williams - Dog Leap Stairs '1999/2019

Tracks list

       On the basis of this debut album, originally released on her own Caw
Records (and later reissued in the U.S. by East West), British singer/songwriter
Kathryn Williams earned laudatory comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake.
To be sure, there is some of each of those artists (both admitted influences) in
Dog Leap Stairs. As with Drake's Five Leaves Left, some of Williams' songs (such
as "Fade" and, with its lovely thread of cello, the resplendent "Lydia," a pair
of the songs produced by PJ Harvey collaborator Head) are dusted with delicate,
Baroque touches of stunning incandescence, and like the most intimate recordings
(Both Sides Now, Blue) from Mitchell, the recording feels at times ("Handy," the
glockenspiel-drizzled "Dog Without Wings") as if you are being ushered into the
most private confessions of the songwriter. But while those allusions work for
various brief stretches, a much more apt reference for Williams' method is the
early Velvet Underground, particularly the Nico-fronted band of the first album,
as well as Nico's own first solo LP, Chelsea Girl. The sentiment throughout Dog
Leap Stairs is certainly not as taciturn and emotionally tranquilizing as those
albums, but the music is often just as sparse and the melodies as affectingly
brittle ("No One to Blame"). Williams' performance, on the other hand, is so
achingly soulful that the songs ultimately feel life-affirming, even during the
album's most baldly painful ("What Am I Doing Here?," the lovely piano ballad
"Madmen and Maniacs") or darkly tethered ("Night Came," "Something Like That")
moments, and even when it threatens to placidly vanish beneath its own
bashfulness. There is nothing, in other words, brutal about the album's beauty;
to the contrary, it is ultimately entrancing. In any event, the acclaim was
merited. It is delightful, yes. It is charming. But Dog Leap Stairs, beneath its
sedated surface, has teeth, too.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Kathryn Williams - Leazes Park (3:19)
1.02 - Kathryn Williams - Night Came (3:53)
1.03 - Kathryn Williams - What Am I Doing Here? (3:59)
1.04 - Kathryn Williams - No-One To Blame (3:31)
1.05 - Kathryn Williams - Something Like That (3:15)
1.06 - Kathryn Williams - Lydia (2:45)
1.07 - Kathryn Williams - Handy (2:32)
1.08 - Kathryn Williams - Dog Without Wings (2:28)
1.09 - Kathryn Williams - Fade (3:35)
1.10 - Kathryn Williams - Madmen And Maniacs (2:59) 

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