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Jess Williamson Announces UK Tour for February 2017 – new album Heart Song out now via Brutal Honest

January 13, 2017

Daniel Everett Patrick

JESS WILLIAMSON
Announces UK Tour for February
New Album Heart Song out now via Brutal Honest
Austin singer-songwriter Jess Williamson heads back to the UK for her first shows since the release of her second album Heart Song in November. Having toured with Kevin Morby and Marissa Nadler at the end of last year, she heads back to the UK to play headline shows. Williamson creates stunning folk music flecked with Appalachian-style fingerpicking and anchored by her warm, rich vocal stylings, bridging the gap between soulful blues and yearning melancholia.

Tour Dates:

4 Feb – Gullivers Lounge – Manchester
6 Feb – The Hug and Pint – Glasgow
8 Feb – Brudenell Social Club, Games Room – Leeds
9 Feb – Cluny 2 – Newcastle
12 Feb – Rough Trade West In-Store – London
13 Feb – Servant Jazz Quarters – London
15 Feb – The Prince Albert – Brighton
(more dates tba)

Praise for Heart Song:

“A voice in the vicinity of Cat Power or Karen Dalton, intimate and husky, as if lit by candlelight.” Mojo 4*s

“Bare-boned country-gothic confessionals full of ruined romance, self-lacerating depression and regret.” Uncut

“In turns stark and musically lush, hugely imaginative and yet entirely direct, the record seems to effortlessly move past her debut.” CLASH

“Chilling, endearing folk that both soothes and unsettles the soul.” London in Stereo

“Jess Williamson has a voice that deserves to be heard and appreciated, it’s full of bluesy soulfulness that’s capable of moving effortlessly between tender embrace and tortured soul.” Contact Music

Jess Williamson’s Heart Song is a brave record. It explores the strength in vulnerability, the power in silence and empty space. The recordings bristle with energy and confidence while maintaining the intense intimacy Williamson is known for. Like the visceral desert landscape that inspires her, she knows when to let her vocals drift across the song, light like a tumbleweed, and when to, like the fiercest of Texas storms, unleash thunder and lightning with her band.A few years back, Jess Williamson returned home to her native Texas to reconsider everything and rethink the direction of her life. It was that about-face that gave her the security and solitude, the inspiration, needed to create 2014’s highly acclaimed debut album, Native State.

But that was two years ago.

Williamson’s second album, Heart Song, questions the structures of support inherent in the comforts of home and showcases the rare kind of artistry that is the hardest to achieve after early success: change.

The opening song, “Say It”, eases the listener into a groove before the song cracks open and floods the landscape with squall and noise and thunder; announcing that Heart Song is not the same album as it’s predecessor, that this work is not only the next logical step in Williamson’s evolution, it is also a leap forward for her as an artist.

On the album’s centrepiece and title track Williamson wonders aloud, “Will I grow into my body?” but no one listening to her music, her poetry, will doubt her growth.

Is freedom really nothing left to lose?Is freedom something that I have?

Something that I have, with you?

You’ve got the phases of the moon to blame

But I am a slave to a part of my heart

Nameless and untamed,

My Heart

The seventh and final song, “Devil’s Girl,” closes out the album with a step back, just close vocals and quiet guitar, and we are reminded again of the essence of what makes Williamson such a phenomenal artist: her ability to tap into the universal. “Yesterday I was on the phone with a woman with my mother’s name/ Offering to meet me halfway between here and St. Louis /And I saw again the intimacy that comes between/ Strangers with stakes in the same crisis”. The song is a meditation and a restorative close to an extraordinary album.

Heart Song was recorded direct to tape in Austin, TX by Erik Wofford (The Black Angels, Bill Callahan) at Cacophany Studios and by the band in Jess’s house. It was mixed by Larry Crane (Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power) at Jackpot Recording in Portland, OR. The album is out now on Williamson’s own imprint, Brutal Honest, and is distributed worldwide via Kartel.

Heart Song Tracklist:

1. “Say It”

2. “White Bed”

3. “Heart Song”

4. “Snake Song”

5. “See You In A Dream”

6. “Last Word”

7. “Devil’s Girl”

Jess Williamson Social Links:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Soundcloud
Bandcamp

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