Little Black Numbers

She screams originality, whispers of a creative spirit that hasn’t emerged from a xerox.

Kathryn Williams’ solo debut wears her Mercury nomination effortlessly. Even her drole title tells its own story: Williams’ little black numbers owe more to Nick Drake than Donna Karan.

A literate and occasionally obtuse storyteller, Williams belongs to the less-is-more school of songwriting. She renders meditations on the daily quirks and foibles of relationships into sublime skeins that flicker and ebb in and out of focus. In someone else’s hands, voice, guitar and cello could so easily smack of bedsit balladry, but here they coalesce in an entirely new compound.

It’s difficult to snag the essence of Williams’ success as a singer/songwriter. Like the best wordsmiths, many of hers are as secular as anything any of us might utter – but her delivery translates them into something much more spirit-shocking. ‘Morning Song’ captures the pith of dawn’s unspoken anxieties with its opening line, “There’s a mood on your mouth/Sparkles like a jewel”.

‘We Came Down From The Trees’ could be a reality check for any pair given to mutual flagellation betimes, and as for bare naked ‘Jasmine Hoop’, well, … let’s just say there are snapshots of the soul here that only a hermit could claim to have no kinship with.

Anyway, Williams is in need of no embellishments from hacks. All we really need to know is that Little Black Numbers is in a league all of its own.