12 Nov 2017

Review: The broken beauty of Marlon Williams

From RNZ Music, 12:57 pm on 12 November 2017

After a year of touring, heartbreak, and writing new songs, Marlon Williams is back in Aotearoa performing with his faithful band. Melody Thomas takes a listen. 

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King;

Wellington bar San Fran is packed - the young crowd up front jostling for position while the older fans hang back by the bar. There’s a group that have travelled down from Auckland to see Marlon Williams for the second time in two nights, and their devotion is reflected by many others around them. Marlon could probably do anything tonight and the audience would leave happy.

I too am a big fan of Marlon Williams. His voice is jaw dropping, angelic but with an edge that suggests more than one fall from grace, and it appears to escape from him as if by accident. Many who love Marlon compare this voice to the likes of Roy Orbison and Elvis, and he satisfied those fans with a few croony numbers that also served to show off his band to great effect.

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King;

But it’s during those songs that my mind starts to drift elsewhere. It is all a bit too perfect - aesthetically beautiful but emotionally impermeable. The moments when Marlon really shines, in my eyes, are when he opens up a little to let us in - as in the utter devastation of new song ‘Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore’, performed on his upcoming album alongside his ex girlfriend Aldous Harding, and tonight by his bandmate Ben Woolley. Or the endearing childishness of tragicomic tale ‘Vampire Again’. Or, as in my favourite performance and also the final song of the night, a cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins ‘Portrait of a Man’, when Marlon starts to become a little unhinged - moving out from behind his guitar to confront the audience as anger racks his voice, before sitting fragile and forlorn to confide that he has “taken all the heartaches and all the pain he can stand”. It is in these moments that you remember Marlon is also an actor, and this theatricality - delivered with a raw vulnerability - transforms his performance from great to truly staggering.  

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

There are other magic moments like this - the crowd erupting into applause for the opening chords of ‘Dark Child’, one of the standout songs from his self-titled debut to which many sang along throughout. The rollicking new number ‘Party Boy’ with its jealous and threatening sentiments. The strings provided by bandmate Dave Khan, consistently incredible ‘high lonesome’ harmonies from Ben Woolley, and some intense, distorted guitar playing providing great contrast to “that voice”.

Many of the songs on Marlon’s first album were written by or co-written alongside other people, but you wouldn’t know it. Like with ‘Portrait of a Man’, Marlon has a way of inhabiting other people’s songs so fully they feel like they could only have come from within him. If he can learn to be as comfortable in his own skin as he is in other people’s, he will be unstoppable.

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington

Marlon Williams performs at San Fran in Wellington Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King;

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