the Stanley Brothers

The breakup album is a standard trope of rock music. Bob Dylan set the benchmark in 1975 with Blood On The Tracks; Beck’s Sea Change (2002) is a famous more modern example. Now Marlon Williams – the 28-year-old Melbourne-based New Zealander with the golden throat – has offered his own contribution to the form with his second album, Make Way For Love.

And Williams is making no secret of the album’s source: the dissolution of his three-year relationship with another acclaimed New Zealander, Aldous Harding, in December 2016. He even coaxed her to sing on the album’s penultimate song, the duet Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore.

“I think she saw how important it was to me, more than anything, and that song, more than any other, expresses a feeling I couldn’t put into her words any other way,” Williams says. “I’m actually telling her something in that song, and she’s responding through my words in her voice, so it’s a really important song for me.”

After a long apprenticeship in his home country, Williams burst into international view with his debut solo album in 2015. He was acclaimed for his storytelling gift and stunning voice, a tremulous instrument that’s often been compared to Roy Orbison.… Read more..