Read our review of ‘Front Porch’ by Joy Williams
Joy Williams – ‘Front Porch‘
By Keiran Croker
Four-time Grammy Award-winning artist Joy Williams’ highly anticipated new solo album, Front Porch, has been released via Sensibility/Thirty Tigers.
Earlier in the year I had the opportunity to review a new recording The Hurting Kind from John Paul White. Now it’s the turn of his former partner in music from duo The Civil Wars, Joy Williams. While John Paul has returned to a lush country sound, Joy’s offering is going back even further to the simplicity of playing on her front porch. Hence her recording is aptly named.
This one could easily have been recorded on the front porch in the woods – a couple of acoustic guitars with friends dropping by to add occasional licks of fiddle, mandolin and slide steel. And of course there is the pristine voice of Joy effortlessly sitting above.
Produced by Kenneth Pattengale of the Milk Carton Kids and engineered by the fabled Matt Ross-Spang, Front Porch represents a new chapter in Williams’ career.
The songs move from loss, resilience and longing through to hope and love. “Canary” offers a defiant cry of “I will sing”, while “When Does a Heart Move On” and “The Trouble With Wanting” deal with loss and longing.
The title track, plus “All I Need” and “No Place Like You” talk of coming home and a yearning for a simpler life.
Here’s the clip for “Front Porch”
“So much of this is about coming home,” says Williams. “Whether to a physical place or to yourself. The lines on my face, I can see them more clearly now. But a lot of them are laugh lines. This record feels like breathing more deeply into who I am. Come what may.”
The closing track “Look How Far We’ve Come” wraps it up with a hopeful vibe and the observation that we have only just begun.
Joy Williams has released four solo albums and four EPs since her self-titled debut in 2001. She was half of the highly successful The Civil Wars pair from 2009 until 2014, after which she released her solo LP, 2015’s Venus.
Surely we will continue to hear more from Joy Williams and her gorgeous voice. And lets hope it’s in this form stripped back and simple …. simply gorgeous!
Via Cooking Vinyl Australia
Read our review of ‘Front Porch’ by Joy Williams
***
