Bella Union release A.A. Williams's Songs From Isolation, an album of covers. The project started at the beginning of the UK’s nationwide lockdown in March 2020. Williams took songs suggested by fans and created a series of videos presenting the tracks with stripped-down instrumentation, recorded and filmed from her home in North London. The album represents a continuation of the project into a full collection of recordings and features cover versions of songs by The Cure, Pixies, Deftones, Nick Cave, Gordon Lightfoot, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and more...

Following on from 2020's Forever Blue, A.A. Williams releases a collection of covers of songs that have been suggested by her fans. It's a totally different beast to her previous album and it may end up seriously dividing her fans.

While the original recordings of these 9 tracks (41 min, 57 sec) are diverse, Williams beats any emotion or joy out of them and presents them all as dry and rather flat covers. I get it. Everyone (well, almost everyone) has had a shitty time in lockdown and so Williams's delivery wonderfully captures that despair and emptiness... but maybe an upbeat song or two wouldn't have gone a miss. It would have been nice if she's given the listener some hope of a better future... but no, we just trudge on and on feeling sorry for ourselves. At least that's how it felt on a first listen.

Revisiting this several times over the course of a few weeks and I have to say that I did start to warm to it, it's just I wish Williams has added a bit of variety to her delivery to help mix it up a bit.

Track listing:

01. Lovesong (The Cure)
02. Where Is My Mind (Pixies)
03. If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
04. Creep (Radiohead)
05. Nights In White Satin (The Moody Blues)
06. Be Quiet And Drive (Deftones)
07. Every Day Is Exactly The Same (Nine Inch Nails)
08. Into My Arms (Nick Cave)
09. Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans (Smashing Pumpkins)

7

Nick Smithson