Kathryn Williams – Hypoxia
- Written by Jude Manning
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.