The 24-year-old New Zealander already having fronted Christchurch outfit The Unfaithful Ways’ debut LP and co-helmed weird-country triptych Sad But True Vols I – III (with Delaney Davidson), Williams‘ solo debut was overdue. The former chorister delivered on every promise, summoning the vocal performance of the year with an antique penny thrown into a haunted mineshaft: see “When I Was a Young Girl”, Williams‘ desolate take on American folk standard “One Morning In May”. From Western TV-theme charge “Hello Miss Lonesome” to “Dark Child” – a flaying indie-rock elegy for a youth destroyed and birthright forfeited – to haunted house phantasy “Strange Things” (‘she left me alone in a seven-bedroom home built upon the bones of fallen soldiers’), Williams shrouds so much timeless country-folk brilliance in the same creeping, lingering sense of disquiet.
The Fat Angel Sings 