Every December, Christchurch, NZ enjoys the start of summer as Saskatoon, SK begins to freeze over. For as far apart as these places may seem, you would never know it from the sound ofPlastic Bouquet, the debut collaborative album between Saskatoon duo Kacy and Clayton and Christchurch singer and songwriter Marlon Williams. While on tour across Europe in 2017, Kacy and Clayton quite literally stopped Marlon in his tracks. As if playing by divine design through the radio, the pair’s Springtime of the Year immediately enchanted him. Soon thereafter, Marlon hopped a flight to Saskatoon and they wrote and recorded the bulk of what would become Plastic Bouquet. They unlocked undeniable chemistry. With Plastic Bouquet, these three musicians find common ground in dusty country spun through a kaleidoscope of psychedelic soul and dreamy fifties delivery. They created an ethnosphere that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s also the beginning of something very exciting.
Kacy: ”For the album, this was the first song I wrote that I sent to Marlon. So it was written before I knew him, but there are some parts that maybe would make you think otherwise. He wrote a line or two on it. It was written before he arrived into Canada with this winter scene in mind. I added some lines like the one including the Southern Hemisphere, to make it more kitchy, ha ha!
We postponed the song because I was worried about it. I thought all the other songs were way better and I was embarrassed to present it. So I had to finish it up. The song is very short because I cut a lot of verses from it. The story changed and I just felt they were unnecessary information. The first verse is just half as long as the second. I felt the verse melody was too boring to keep going for too long, so hit the chorus and trick everyone into listening to the last minute of the song.
Clayton played the organ at the start of the song, he played most of the fancy stuff on the album which was a nice asset to have hanging around. Marlon and I are more for the singing but Marlon definitely changed that one up. He played the electric guitar which I think is a nice part. It was just a little acoustic fingerpicking song before. I think he actually provided the most guidance on that song out of all of them, arrangement wise and adding a line and such. I’m glad we got it out.”
Marlon: ”That’s a song that Kacy wrote early on in the process and one of the first songs we had good to go. She writes such beautiful melodies for her voice. You’re compelled to fall in love with her songs because of how she puts melodies to such a beautiful voice. For me there was a very rare moment to be able to play a guitar solo, I have never done one!
We produced the album together instead of having someone else. Because of our shared love for the same music and having that same bedrock of foundational, traditional country music, all of this happened very organically so there wasn’t really much of a need for an extra party to make it all gel. The way we had started sending the songs back and forth to each other, there was no point at which we couldn’t work things out on our own.”
Kacy Lee Anderson and Marlon Williams
The Fat Angel Sings 