Glastonbury Festival - Fields of Avalon

Astrid Williamson - Review

Sunday Morning Confessional

Confessional and true in both tone and fact, Astrid Williamson’s voice evokes comparisons with countrywoman Eddie Reader, Joni Mitchell, a less damaged Lucinda Williams - even Mary Chapin-Carpenter. She’s lived, she’s participated in life and love; it shows. Williamson’s writing posses the rare ability to distil the essence of experience and observation; she recounts the end result in insightful, articulate, gentle vignettes.

In a previous life she was front-woman of critically acclaimed/commercially shy/thoroughly intriguing ‘Goya Dress’ (label mates of Suede, no less) but Williamson’s set primarily showcases songs from her two solo albums: ‘Boy For You’ and ‘Astrid’. Casting her spell over a calm, inquisitive Sunday morning Avalon audience, she is greeted with a warm affection, despite the inadvertent sabotage attempts of ‘Idol Justice’ hammering out hardcore metal from the nearby Little Massive Tent.

On ‘Tumbling Into Blue” she sings “The sky breaks down in tears, oceans filled with song and drowning hearts that got it wrong”. Heartbreaking. The vulnerable “Someone” adorned with “You look like someone I should love”.

Almost apologetically Williamson introduces a bravely deconstructed version of Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’. “I’ve never done a cover before” she whispers. She needn’t worry. A triumph of interpretation ‘Run’ is already tentatively planned as the b-side of her next single, the haunting ‘Never Enough’. Scheduled for a September release on her own label, Incarnation Records, it - and she – is worth catching when you get the chance.

Martin J Williams

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