As Marlon Williams releases his highly-anticipated third album, My Boy, the singer-songwriter talks to Rachel Ashby about breaking patterns, role playing and finding Māoritanga in music, and is photographed by Karen Inderbitzen-Waller and Delphine Avril Planqueel exclusively for Ensemble and Sunday magazine.
Marlon Williams (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāitai) is an artist embarking on a new chapter.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter is on the cusp of releasing his third solo album, My Boy (out September 9), which sees him move away from his folk-country roots and step into a kaleidoscopic landscape of shimmering synths, feathery guitars and charming pop sensibilities. Emerging from the Covid disruptions of the last two years, Williams seems relaxed and confident with a renewed energy for music making.
Inevitably, the pandemic had a hand in shaping the course of this new sound. When Covid first kicked off, Williams was back home in Banks Peninsula having just played more than 70 international shows on tour for his wildly successful sophomore album Make Way For Love. That record chronicled his break-up with fellow Lyttelton songsmith Aldous Harding and was a complicated journey for him to perform.
“It felt like a necessary process at the time, and that still really holds for me,” says Williams, when I catch up with him on a sunny afternoon in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. “It was a great way to exorcise that demon, but I was exhausted in every sense”.
So when lockdown struck, hunkering down for a while didn’t seem like such an unappealing option. “I think the album caught a lot of the spirit of that time: a happy loneliness and a gratitude for the landscape I was in,” says Williams.
He spent the time at his Lyttelton flat binge-watching The Sopranos and drinking Double Browns with his flatmate and sound engineer Tom Lynch. “We also did a lot of recording,” Williams laughs. “Tom’s a great foil for me creatively. He low-key has a lovely voice and can play the bass like a champ.”
A sonic magpie by nature, Williams credits a diverse and hearty lockdown soundtrack for helping colour the various shades of My Boy. “I was a bit nervous about how disparate all my sounds were, and how it was all going to come together. But in the end it was intuitive and I really enjoyed composing the overall image from those pieces”.
Tracks such as Thinking of Nina and My Heart The Wormhole borrow their melodrama from new romantic groups like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. Elsewhere there is exciting psychedelic weirdness, a stunning cover of Barry Gibb’s Promises, and other songs that seem to owe their rich lyricism to folk artists like Judee Sill and Robert Wyatt.
LISTEN: Marlon Williams' 'My Boy'
Most interestingly, there is a distinctly Māori sound throughout My Boy, which is present in the album’s lush vocal harmonies and the iconic “chinga-chick” Māori guitar strum, a firm down strum on the beat, followed by percussive upwards strums played on the off-beat to create a playful rhythm. Williams references groups such as the Maniapoto Voices as a big influence on him, as well as the waiata he and his mum would cram-learn before going to the marae when he was younger. “It was a really beautiful musical thread to have growing up,” he says.
“I've been playing Māori songs and sort of developing my own little version of that sound for a few years. I think that I really needed to get a song of that vibe out there for myself,” says Williams when I ask him about working with these distinctive sounds.
“My Boy was the first song consciously written in that style for the record. It took as long to write as it does to play, it just fell out of me. Now that I’ve used it a couple of times, I want all my songs to have some variation on the Māori strum - it's really attractive.” The song has already garnered critical acclaim, and just this week it was announced as a top five finalist for the 2022 APRA Silver Scroll Award.
Being stuck at home for the past two years also provided Williams with an opportunity to reconnect with his Māoritanga. Williams is Ngāi Tahu via his mum, who took him along to all the local hui as a child. His dad’s people are Ngāitai from the Bay of Plenty, so Williams didn’t get to see as much of them growing up. He went to kōhanga reo as a kid and has since dabbled in a few university papers and an online diploma in te reo Māori.
Recently, he’s been collaborating musically with his current te reo teacher Kommi Tamati-Elliffe (Ngāi Tahu, Te Atiawa). “I’ve been learning to speak the language through writing and creating. I'm sure it's going to lead to a very specific kind of Māori that I'll end up speaking,” he laughs. “But I’m trying to be more holistic about the whole thing. Māori is such a sung language, so in some ways it makes a lot of sense to be learning like this”.
Reclaiming his reo hasn’t been a straightforward process for Williams. “There are personal and familial challenges for sure,” he says. “Dad doesn’t really speak it but he grew up in a very taha Māori environment. So there’s a tension there. It's in my dad and I can feel it in me too. It trickles down”. Despite this fraught terrain, several tracks on My Boy feature a nonchalant peppering of the language.
When I ask him about the decision to write te reo into his music like this, Williams says it started to happen naturally and he has found the casualness enticing. “There’s a political and social weight that goes along with speaking te reo. I think having a bit of featheryness to centre the way we approach language is sometimes important. It has to be able to breathe and not be defined by negativity - you don’t want to wear those scars. With these songs I'm just trying to maintain something of a lightness.”
Recently, Williams returned from the European leg of Lorde’s Solar Power tour, where he performed solo each night as the opening act. On the last show of this run, he joined Lorde (Ella Yelich O’Connor) on stage in London to sing Mata Kohore, the reo Māori interpretation of her track Stoned at the Nail Salon. Williams also provided backing vocals for Lorde’s 2021 reo Māori EP Te Ao Mārama. He says the London duet was very significant for him.
“Sitting on the stage at Alexandra Palace was a real postcard moment for me. I had a strong feeling of being a part of history. It sort of reminded me of those early stories of Māori in the 1800s going over to England to see what the Queen's place is like. Matariki had just started a few days earlier too so it was a really beautiful time.”
Williams will be heading back to the Northern Hemisphere this month to perform My Boy around Europe and North America for three months. He’ll be joined on that tour by artist Reb Fountain and her band, who will be opening the shows with their signature gothic folk-punk.
Fountain and Williams have known each other for more than a decade and have performed together with groups like The Eastern. Both artists have worked prolifically across the folk scene that centred on Lyttelton around the time of the Christchurch earthquakes.
“Bands from down south used to come and stay at my house with me and the kids when they were passing through Auckland. I think one of those occasions was where I first met Marlon,” remembers Fountain when I speak with her on the phone. “Particularly when Delaney [Davidson] and Marlon were at the start of their Sad But True tour we really got to hang out a lot and sing together. They were really good times.”
A lot has changed in the decade since then, but the closeness of that community still remains. “I feel very grateful and honoured that Marlon has asked us to perform with him in Europe and America because we're unknown over there,” says Fountain.
For Williams it’s a mutual feeling. “Scenes are so important. If you're in any way collaborative by nature, it can make or break your whole career. One of the best perks of the job is being able to hang out with your mates overseas and lift up their work,” he says.
While Williams will be joined on this tour by his old backing band The Yarra Benders, pandemic-induced separation forced him to record the album with a different combination of musicians. The album was recorded at Roundhead Studios in Tāmaki Makaurau and was produced by Tom Healy (The Chills, Tiny Ruins) who also performed guitars and synths. Hollie Fullbrook of Tiny Ruins makes appearances on vocals and cello throughout the record. The rhythm section was held down by Cass Basil (Ladyhawke, Tiny Ruins, King Sweeties) on bass, with Elroy Finn and Paul Taylor (Feist) providing drums and percussion. Old mates Dave Khan (Yarra Benders, Reb Fountain) and Delaney Davidson also contributed their musical expertise.
“It was a good way to escape my own musical tendencies,” Williams says of the change. “I didn’t want my old patterns reflected back to me when I was experimenting with newness.”
This ethos of experimentation lends the album a theatrical, shifting quality. Listening through My Boy it almost appears as if Williams is performing a series of masculine characters on the record. When I ask him who these “boys” are he admits that it’s still a bit of a mystery to him too.
“Across a lot of the record there is definitely a strong, older male figure. Sometimes it’s me, and sometimes it's an abstract big brother.” Certainly for a song such as Soft Boys Make The Grade, Williams owns that he’s having a go at himself as much as anyone else. “It's a sort of self-flagellating song,” he laughs. “It’s a send-up, but a loving one.”
For the most part these characters remain elusive, and that’s the way Williams likes it. “For my own processing of the songs I don’t want to see anyone too specific in there, I just want to be able to play with these shadowy figures and watch them morph over time.”
The last few years have seen Williams flex his acting chops on screen with roles in major productions like The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix’s dystopian series Sweet Tooth. He credits his fledgling acting career with helping him hone his narrative sensibilities. “I can spatialise a song now in a way that I think comes from acting. It's made me look at character development and world building much more three dimensionally”.
New Zealand fans won’t have to wait long to see Williams bring these characters to the stage as he and his band are set to shortly announce a tour of Aotearoa for January 2023. “I'm really looking forward to embodying the playfulness of My Boy in a live setting, and I'm already excited about the next thing, you know,” says Williams, thinking ahead.
As an album, My Boy feels like a line in the sand for an artist who is coming into his own and isn’t afraid of feeling out something new along the way. In other words, Marlon Williams looks like he’s having an awful lot of fun.
“I feel I've put my lightness into the record and the record is putting it back into me too.”
