A.A. Williams Envelops Listeners With Emotionally Captivating Holy Roar Debut

A.A. Williams’ music feels like a supernatural experience. Ultimately, it’s almost surprising that her January 25 self-titled Holy Roar Records debut only has four songs considering the breadth of the emotional journey it travels. One can only wonder how foreboding a longer collection of music from her would be.

Her songs don’t neatly fit into any particular genre, although they are relatively straightforward singer/songwriter material. Most of the time, her vocal work takes center stage, although her music also expertly moves into more blatantly majestic and almost cinematic passages at times. She doesn’t rely on any particular single feature to make her mark, instead tying the various threads she’s working with into a tapestry that deserves to be marveled at and appreciated.

Remarkably enough, at the same time, each “thread” she works with feels as though it’s glimmering enough to stand on its own. Each one of her songs feels like a universe, with her presentation blending both resoundingly somber moods enough to knock the listener off their feet — metaphorically at least — and a very specific examination of a particular life circumstance. Every note of her self-titled debut feels like it follows an exact path evident through means like her clearly purposefully wavering vocal work leaving the listener inescapably deeply affected.

She holds her work together with lyrical concepts you won’t forget easily, sounding like she truly dug into her artistic inspiration to be able to really say what she was feeling. She’s almost surprisingly blunt at times, and yet that lyrical and sonic directness sits suspended in a fog of ambition.

Where others might have preferred to focus on the easily quantifiable aspects of our existence as inspiration for their work, Williams feels as though she has captured an emotional fog in music — which is no small feat. Like the real life version of that fog, Williams’ music doesn’t provide an overabundance of answers for the listener, instead feeling better suited to be savored and pondered. It feels like more than trying to hit a particular mark, Williams felt some of the fog she taps into to the point where she needed to put it to tape, and now others affected by the same suspicious malaise can find some understanding.

5/5 Stars

Listen below via Bandcamp.