All breakup albums are about Love, loss, grief and acceptance, in that order. A narrative arc of emotional pain and growth. The very best ones are able to bring it back around to Love again, finding a way to recapture the essence of what was good about the relationship before turning towards the great unknown with a smile and a nod. Marlon Williams’ new album is called Make Way For Love. You do the math.

Ostensibly the record is about his split with fellow kiwi folk-genius Aldous Harding (whose album Party comfortably cracked my Top 10 for 2017). That was the inspiration, but it’d be pretty reductive to focus on what may or may not be autobiographical, especially for such an emotionally raw album. That in itself was a slight surprise. The idea that he was doing something so introspective this time, having emerged with such a wonderful but wide-ranging debut record a couple years back, kind of made for hesitation. After all, several of those 2014 tracks were covers and a couple more were written in-character whereas every song here is either directed at ‘you’ or sung by ‘me’ or ‘I’ and Marlon’s written the lot one of them (with co-writing credits to Delaney Davidson on two tracks). Not exactly the formula we were introduced to.

Well, we were fools if we ever doubted him. Make Way For Love is a little more indie songwriter than country folk but the spirit remains untouched. This dude writes sculpted and timeless tunes that wash over you at first like a gentle breeze on a summer’s day. Three songs got the early release via videos but the videos were so damned glorious that it was tough to get a line on the actual songs they were selling. Come To Me featured Marlon playing pickup basketball in a Steven Adams jersey with his mates before chomping down on some fish and chips. I mean, come on. It’s perfect. As is What’s Chasing You with his shirtless waltzing on the beach and his reckless sandcastle destruction.

The exception was the first single: Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore, which turns out to be the emotional climax of the record. Aldous Harding duets on the track and it’s gorgeous and sweet and a little different with those strummed electric guitars at the forefront, deliberately underwritten. Three minutes in, though, it switches up. “What am I going to do when you’re in trouble and you don’t call out for me?” Suddenly it’s Marlon alone again with his fears. No choice but to admit it: “Baby, I can’t separate us out anymore”.

Isn’t that the whole dilemma? Two people entwined as one until they aren’t anymore and it feels like you’ve been torn in half. Make Way For Love commences with the two other vids. Come To Me is a siren’s song from an Aotearoa beach, an invocation to Love. What’s Chasing You is the first obstacle. Beautiful Dress is seduction, Party Boy is a threat, Can I Call You is desperation. Love Is A Terrible Thing and I Know A Jeweller are cynical ruminations. I Didn’t Make A Plan is an acknowledgement. The Fire Of Love is penance. Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore is reluctant farewell and acceptance. Make Way For Love is devotion and renewal.

Noah Georgeson took on production and mixing duties here, having worked with the likes of Joanna Newsom, Cate Le Bon and Devendra Banhart in the past. His work is subtle and tasteful, allowing the best of Marlon’s talents to shine without slapping glitter all over it. These songs deserve to breathe so their subtleties can be unveiled in time and that’s what we get. Shout out to that guy.

If you’ve seen Marlon Williams live or if you’ve only glanced on a video here or there then you know equally that his finest talent is that voice, impossible to accurately describe. Suffice to say that there are moments on this album where his particular vocal phrasing will send shivers up your spine in rolling convulsions, your eyeballs rocking to the back of their sockets and your loins left enflamed. Sometimes his voice is so close to the front that you can almost hear his tongue click, other times it’s the grandiosity that gets you.

On first listen the record was pleasantly heartbreaking. With every subsequent forty minute worship it’s only grown in excellence. The very best albums have a way about them where the standout track shifts with each listen. Songs take it in turn to reveal their wonders. And, as Marlon closes the album saying: “oh let the wonder of the ages be revealed as Love”. Not saying that this is a classic album because it’s far too early to suggest such a thing. But so far so good, you know? The last record that was this beguiling to me was probably Frank Ocean’s Blonde and I’d fly the flag of that one as the album of the decade so far… so yeah. High praise for a lad from Littleton.

There are two specific moments of vocal perfection herein. One is the way he delivers the line “the water it just blended with the wine” on I Didn’t Make A Plan, which, with its layering and added resonance, sounds so much like Jason Molina/Songs: Ohia that it’ll melt you. The “Hey-Ohs” don’t exactly diminish the comparison either but, deliberately or not, that’s one hell of a touchstone. Molina had a similar talent for reaching to the very depths of the human soul to clutch at truths that are at once immortal, universal and utterly shattering. That’s good company to keep.

The other is on the following track where Marlon croons: “and I’m left along to tremble like an adolescent king”. I haven’t heard such a sublime utterance of the word tremble in a song, the way it invokes both terror and sadness, since Davie Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Very close to those moments of nuclear passion is the final verse of the opening track:

“And when you find me, we’ll share our troubles and fears. They’ll wither over the years and die when we do”

Argh, that’s poetry. You can’t even read that without it slapping you in the face with the beauty of it all, let alone hearing him sing it the way he does. After all, it’s always the beauty that hurts the most. This guy has teased what a fantastic lyricist he is before but here that is in full force. Between this and Aldous Harding’s Party (maybe a dash of Nadia Reid as well) it shan’t be long before they’re teaching classes on the modern kiwi folk revival at Auckland Uni. I Know A Jeweller is a particular stunner for how he spins a knowing yarn with an old fashioned twist at the end (he singled it out on RNZ as a song he’s particularly proud of and you can see why a songwriter would take pride in a piece of craft like that).

Blood on the Tracks stands out among the crowd. In The Wee Small Hours, of course. Rumours, Blue and Here, My Dear. These are breakup albums that have come to be renowned as classics and what do Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye all have in common? Empathy. That’s what sets these albums apart, the being able to see things from both perspectives and end on a wishful note. Bob Dylan vents a little more anger than the others, naturally, but even he comes around to Buckets of Rain in the end.

Marlon Williams also has that gift for perspective – in Come To Me there’s a gorgeous line: “and I’m high up above you, looking down with my bird’s eye and loving you”. Perhaps that’s what’s most moving about getting Aldous on the penultimate track to sing along with him, to express a mirrored opposite to his. “There is no blame, there is no shame”. Just as he closed the song before with a hopeful missive: “the road is hard to follow and I’ve been drifting too but if you ever find the middle I’ll be waiting when you do”. Doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, of course.

And then you know what? Make Way For Love. The title track. Barging on in there are the end with its 50s shuffle and angelic harmonies. Make way, amigo. You don’t have a choice in the matter. Love is coming whether you wish it or not. Plus it gives us a chance to hear Marlon at his crooniest, which is never not a marvel to behold.

During Love Is A Terrible Thing, he sings: “people tell me boy you dodged a bullet but if only it had hit me then I’d know the peace it brings”. Better to have Loved and lost then never to have Loved at all, basically, except he casts that advice down with self-pitying offence. Five songs later and Love makes its own way back anyway. It’s the only tune that isn’t directed at an individual. It’s the lone universal lesson and it spreads both a romantic light and a shrinking vantage upon all that came before it. You cannot Love without loss, just as you cannot breathe in without breathing out. One begets the other and back again in harmony. In the sacred pantomime of our lives, Love is the one true God/Goddess.

Support The Niche Cache by hitting an ad whenever you read something decent that we’ve provided. Cheers to you, friend.