Image: Paula Cuccurullo

In the dimly lit Speakeasy of Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms, the low stage is barely visible beneath a spaghetti junction of pedals and cables. Guitars line the rear wall of the tiny platform and a keyboard sits with chair precariously near the edge. The snug room is lined with already full seats and those in the audience of roughly 50 who didn’t bag one stand or sit on the floor in anticipation. The cosy venue is suited perfectly to the upcoming performance from singer/songwriter, Kathryn Williams, as she presents tracks from her new album, Hypoxia.

Before Williams take the stage her support act appear; a blonde, red-lipped singer clutching a glitter-edged guitar, and a slim, suited young man straddling a cello. They announce themselves almost shyly, leaving us unsure what the band name is, before launching into a breathtaking performance of Southern-style harmonising and Bluegrass, voices melding perfectly and the versatile cello singing like five different instruments. The songs are sweet and mournful, and we discover later they are The Jellyman’s Daughter. I thoroughly recommend you seek out one of their live performances.

Kathryn Williams is then onstage with backing musicians Andy Bruce – teetering on the piano chair and somehow squeezing in a guitar too - and Simon Edwards, on bass. Williams begins with a couple of Crown Electric tracks including ‘Underground’, penned as she sat on the floor of Kings Cross Station. Then she practically apologises that she’s going to play Hypoxia from start to finish, which nonetheless delights the crowd. Williams is enchanting throughout the evening, making quips about the dark songs as they depict the events of Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar and its protagonist, Esther’s, descent into mental illness. Before playing opener, ‘Electric’, she describes how the lyrics portray Esther’s fascination with the Rosenburg trial then proceeds to croon wispily about the electric chair. She hesitates before explaining the next track, seeking audience approval (to a resounding, “Yes!”), although she often allows her evocative lyrics to speak for themselves.

To take Hypoxia from recording studio to live performance, Williams says, required reconstructing the tracks. In ‘Battleships’, the bass is used cleverly as the ticking clock and she prepares some songs on stage by recording layers of vocals, then using a loop pedal to control them while singing, with wonderfully atmospheric results. Perhaps due to this complexity, there is a brief glitch with sound control that unfortunately affects the tremendously acerbic ‘Tango With Marco’. Williams’ vocals don’t falter, though, and she manages to carry the track.

A barer rendition of ‘When Nothing Meant Less’ showcases the clarity of Williams’ voice as she sings about Esther’s relationship with Joan, a fellow hospital inmate who, like Esther, suffers suicidal thoughts. More upbeat, ‘The Mind Has Its Own Place’ resounds almost cheerily through the intimate setting before a bluesy rendition of ‘Part of Us’ with bittersweet – perhaps pertinent – lyrics; “The last time I felt lonely / the room was full”

Williams’ rendition of ‘Cuckoo’, penned with Ed Harcourt - “In his bath…It’s a good bath” - is one of the most haunting parts of the evening as she sings the disturbing viewpoint of a mother ashamed of her daughter’s illness. An echoing “cuckoo” call fills the dimly lit space and the hair on the back of my neck stands up: in interpreting The Bell Jar, Williams did not sugar-coat the pill.

Finishing Hypoxia, Williams rounds off her performance with a cover of Neil Young’s, ‘I Believe In You’ and her own ‘Heart Shaped Stone’, dipping behind an imaginary curtain (her hands) before reappearing (removing said hands) to complete an encore. Williams’ gentle, self-deprecating wit is so charming that in spite of the sinister element of her new album the audience leave smiling and upbeat, perhaps resolving to settle down soon with Plath’s book and Hypoxia as the perfect accompaniment.

Tackling a brief to produce songs for a remit as wide-reaching as the life and works of Sylvia Plath, Kathryn Williams wisely homed in on Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, after rereading it for the first time since her “moody teenager” years. By focussing only on the book and writing in its characters’ voices, Williams was able to counterbalance her usual gentle style with a robustness, to produce a work both delicate and steely. Profiling the descent of its protagonist, Esther, into mental illness, Plath’s writing technique is described as “visceral” and “muscular” by Williams, who carries this through into her depiction of the novel in this hauntingly beautiful album, Hypoxia.

The opening track is ‘Electric’, in which deceptively gentle guitar-picking and wispy vocals convey Esther’s fascination with news coverage of the trial and impending execution for espionage of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, who went to the electric chair in 1953.

“The news is following me / Black inky shadows behind me / They rerun your fate / I imagine the switch, the gold and the plate”

And this malevolent current runs through the song, drawing on Esther’s own, harrowing experience of electro-convulsive therapy.

“Electric / Who am I to follow? / Made a cast of me / Made me hollow”

Next up and with a masterly change of style, ‘Mirrors’ is grungier, textured and backed by piano chords, distorted guitar and a stuck-record static sandwiched between them. In interview, Williams has described the mirror as an analogy for her creative process; the part between glass and foil, a “mystery” within which fascinates Esther and Williams alike. ‘Mirrors’ depicts the moment when Esther steps into an elevator and fails to recognise her own reflection in the doors; a signifier of her difficulties understanding herself as she begins to struggle with her illness.

“As the lift door closed / I pressed a button for the fourth floor / Your metal eyes cast a stare and I didn’t know what you could see / No-one came in or out and I can count, so you must be me”

Eerie ticking of an old clock heralds ‘Battleships’, as Esther rails against her unwanted relationship, after which the ominously hypnotic ‘Cuckoo’ depicts the inability of Esther’s mother to acknowledge her daughter’s illness. ‘Cuckoo’ was written in partnership with Ed Harcourt, album producer and engineer, and its title also conveys how a relatively small commission for the Durham Book Festival became an obsession for Williams, ultimately morphing into this fully-fledged, polished album. Williams describes how when creating Hypoxia, “this strange little cuckoo that had pushed my other records out of the way was demanding to be fed.”

Continuing the musical tour through The Bell Jar is the sweetly lilting ‘Beating Heart’, further contrasting with preceding tracks. Differences aside, what all of the songs have in common – strangely for such dark subject matter – is catchiness. Often brief, their perfectly-structured choruses – from the hooting ‘Cuckoo’ refrain to the melancholic role call in ‘Mirrors’ – contain such clever, memorable lyrics that it’s inevitable you’ll wind up humming at least one of them at first listen. ‘Tango with Marco’, wherein Williams’ wonderfully succinct turn of phrase is put to work on a scene in the book depicting an attempted rape by that character.

“Every woman-hater I meet / Gets me shuffling my feet… / Like a tango with Marco”

Subtly altering her vocals while keeping their delivery silky, Williams introduces a bitter edge in ‘Tango with Marco’, yet with more vocal shape-shifting becomes gently ethereal in ‘When Nothing Meant Less’, cheerful in ‘The Mind Is Its Own Place’ and bluesy in the closing track, ‘Part Of Us’. Describing how writing with the voice of Plath’s characters granted her a kind of freedom, Williams perhaps explains in part why Hypoxia is so compelling and how she succeeded in crafting such a fascinating and diverse melodic journey through a literary masterpiece.

Hypoxia is available from Amazon and iTunes.