Some music glitters with a hint of something which can't possibly be deliberate but is utterly intrinsic to the music itself - a certain unadorned, crystalline quality of simplicity and purity. I hear it very much in Laura Cantrell's stuff, and also in Troubled by the Fire-era Laura Veirs, and in a slightly different way in the gentle lamentations of the Sundays (especially circa Reading, Writing & Arithmetic), and in no small measure it's also present in the work of Kathryn Williams, a folksy songstress type whose vocal sweetness and stripped-back instrumental arrangements belie the depth of her songs and singing.
Relations is the first of Williams' lps to which I've listened, and it's made up entirely of covers. Two of these I'd heard before - her readings of "Spit on a Stranger" and "All Apologies" - and all up I know about half of the originals (those two + Big Star's "Thirteen" + the Velvets' "Candy Says" + the Bee Gees' "I Started A Joke" + Neil Young's "Birds" + "Hallelujah", which I admittedly know much better in Jeff Buckley's version than Leonard Cohen's...Williams' version is the equal of either of those, lullaby-like and quietly heartbroken), but (somewhat unusually) I enjoy the ones I don't know in their original recordings as much as those which I've just mentioned (opener "In A Broken Dream", cinematic and hesitant, is particularly good). I think that it's because Williams is so adept at doing them all over in her own style - gentle and languorous but clearly-defined and perfectly poised. In truth, the record as a whole doesn't linger even after repeated listening - but it's still all very nice indeed.
