Steven Williams
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Steven Williams

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Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"general reviews"

"Amazing!!" --Heather Caston, former President, Maine Songwriter's Association

"...atmospheric...very impressive." --Doug Cowan, 'Bullyclub'

"One of our favorite performers" --Mark Lembo, founder, Acoustic Coffee

"THE....MAN!!" --Frank Hopkins, Sweet Dream Recording

"....really unique..." --Peter Nenortas, Satronen Sound - general


"review of "Yeah OK""

Reviews of "Yeah OK"
www.thebollard.com

Steven Williams' new CD, Yeah OK, came to me last week with a letter attached that said the album was independently recorded, mastered, and produced by Portland artists. (Rock local!) It went on to say that, while Yeah is not a concept album, it's meant to be listened to "as a single, 43-minute experience."

I found this 43-minute experience alternately beautiful, jarring, impressive and strange.

The first track, "Good Idea," is an appropriate introduction to much that follows. It begins with a siren, tones and blips fading up into the foreground, soon joined by drums recorded from a distance and plucky guitars that intertwine and collapse before the instruments kick in at close volume. After a minute-and-a-half, Williams steps to the microphone, and here the song takes a turn you're not expecting.

Williams' vocal style is unique, sometimes to the point of distraction. His tone is actually quite rich, breathy and complex, and he's got some range. What becomes distracting is his staccato delivery, how he breaks phrases into chunks that don't always fit quite right, like each word was cut and pasted from another source, another song. As "Good Idea" winds down, the melody begins to sound like it was recorded backwards and then played forwards, and when the music starts to mimic the clipped vocal style, you realize there's more intention behind Williams' approach than you first thought.

As Williams goes on to prove with the next track, "Trains," he and his collaborators are talented musicians equally adept at inventive composition. Guitar, keys, and synthy drums build in a slow, gorgeous crescendo worthy of any Death Cab for Cutie song. But where Ben Gibbard's voice would effortlessly glide in and out of musical peaks and valleys, Williams' is hitting the occasional pothole and getting stuck in monotone ruts.

Meanwhile, the music blossoms. This is some of the richest sounding, most skillfully layered, acoustic-indie stuff I've heard come out of the local scene since The Ponys made Shishimumu four years ago.

After these two strong songs, Yeah stumbles a bit, and I was almost lost by the time the sixth track came along. But "Crime" is the album's standout. Williams' voice finds a new range in an easy near-falsetto reminiscent of Ambulance LTD (a group I have never found myself comparing a Portland band to). The instrumentation is strong throughout this album, but when Williams' voice finds its place as comfortably as it does on "Crime," the combination really makes an impression.

Overall, Yeah OK is a strong showing, with many beautiful moments. Though these moments don't gel easily into a single, 43-minute listening experience, Williams and collaborators Frank Hopkins and Chris Dibiaso – with contributions from about a dozen other local players – have made an album you'll want to hear again.

And who knows? Maybe Williams' singing style will grow on you after awhile, like Graham Isaacson's growling baritone? Stranger things have grown on me.

– Sean Wilkinson - thebollard.com


Discography

"Yeah OK" (2006) full length studio CD in production, to be released on Cat & Mouse Records in March of 2006, details at www.stevenwilliamsmusic.com.

"Know You" (2005) 6 song live EP recorded January 7, 2005 at Acoustic Coffee, Portland, ME. Streamed audio is available at www.stevenwilliamsmusic.com

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Steven's music can be described many ways... striking, visual, moving, beautiful. Steven utilizes a loop recording pedal and such oddities as a violin bow and ebow along with interesting strummed percussions, all with a single acoustic guitar, creating layered, deceptively intricate, and often mesemerizing music. Ultimatley more or less label defiant, his music mixes elements of folk, slowcore, math rock and pop into a unique blend of haunting melodies and wistful, ironic lyrics.

Steven is a native New Englander, born on Boston's south shore (S. Weymouth to be precise), and residing in the Portland, Maine area for a majority of his life, mostly in the town of Yarmouth, where he attended High School and was a 1988 grad of YHS. A classically trained singer, and long a tenor 1 and 2 in various choruses in schools and elsewhere, Steven recieved a guitar as a christmas present when he was 14, and immediately started writing music for the guitar. Long interested in Theatre (Steven has a BA in Theatre from the University of Southern Maine), music was never far away and through High School and College Steven was in a number of bands that played everything from REM covers to thrash punk, heavily influenced by 80's style alternative music like Camper Van Beethoven, Husker Du, Pixies, The Cure, Dinosaur Jr, and many others.

Heading into 2004, Steven had been experimenting with bowing a guitar for some time but it wasnt until he attended a Magnetic Fields show in Boston on May of 2004 that his musical path was forever changed. That nights' opener was a performer named Andrew Bird, who's performances are based around live looped violin tracks accompanied by such things as guitar and glockenspeil, creating immensely detailed and satisfying live compositions. Steven bought a loop station shortly thereafter. A year and a half later and Steven has developed a set of beautifully detailed and composed pieces of music based around bowed, strummed and looped guitar, and vocals.