Paul Mardles 

Marlon Williams: Marlon Williams review – unconventional country rock

The New Zealand singer mixes Jeff Buckley influences with early rock’n’roll to bring a weathered quality to his solo debut
  
  

Marlon Williams’s self-titled LP is an unconventional tribute to country rock
Marlon Williams: ‘weathered quality’. Photograph: PR Company Handout

As a former choirboy turned classical music student whose father was a member of a punk band, Marlon Williams was never going to make a conventional country-rock LP. Sure enough, the New Zealander’s solo debut is part Jeff Buckley, part early rock’n’roll, as underlined by his cover of a Billy Fury song (I’m Lost Without You). Williams’s voice is shown off best on another cover, the folk standard When I Was a Young Girl, every second of which rings true. And while he doesn’t know quite where his strengths lie yet, tracks such as Strange Things and Lonely Side of Her boast a ghostly, weathered quality that compensates for the odd hillbilly dud.

 

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