There’s a healthy mix of brutality and vulnerability in the newest album by Davy Williamson. With his release Down by the Fire, you can tell he’s had these emotions bottled within him for some time now, just itching to be utilized in an artistic fashion. After joining the group Emilio 5, he left and then co-founded Third Class Passenger and a few years later joined punk band Ma-Shot-Pa.
URL: https://davywilliamson.com/
As you can pick up, he’s had an eclectic career spanning numerous voices and styles with others, but now he’s here to make his own definitive voice know. The album itself is an exciting almost throwback to the rock, punk, and alt-rock sounds of the early to mid-2000s. You know, the kind of stuff that can really be only called trash rock. Like the sounds of ocean waves have been transformed into the rhythmic banging from drums and electric guitar. You can tell there’s a sort of caged beast element to his work as shown especially in the lyrics. Most of the content of them is about things like lack of trust, betrayal, and anger especially permeates on this record. In personal truth, while the songs are well crafted, well written, they don’t tell me a lot about Williamson as an artist beyond his sound.
These are very common themes that I think people can relate to, and there’s no shortage of exploring these themes in Rock music, but I feel like Williamson has so much going on behind the surface and I just wanna step inside his head for a moment, more intimately. Despite there being so much anger present on the record, there’s no cynicism in this record. He could have easily phoned it in and called it a day, coasting off of his innate talents, but the passion on display is just more than commendable. It’s a pretty quick listen to, each some expertly paced, and none overstay their welcome. In 2020 he released the album’s opener “Thin Disguise” and you can tell even then his vision for the album was very clear. Aesthetically the album and the album artwork are almost reminiscent of the rise of the style called “Cyberpunk”, from the glitchy face that Williamson has on the album artwork, to the font he uses as well, and this adds to the uncertainty that he sings about. He feels disjointed, wanting to feel safe and trusted, but it’s a world where trusting is hard and people are a constant source of disappointment.
Luckily this material never switches to naval gazing or becomes grating, which in this genre is a rare feat and something he should be proud of. It should also be noted that Williamson played every instrument you hear on the album and not only is that impressive for bragging rights, but everything is in perfect harmony and the amount of restraint that’s shown is great. Williamson is an exciting voice right now because he’s not quite new and not quite old, but he’s unpredictable and that’s a great sign in any artist.
Jodi Marxbury