A.A. Williams interview

Interview by Davide Sciaky

Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano qui.

Hello Alex, first of all, how is the tour going? How are you doing? 

The tour’s been great so far and we are near the end now. We have four more shows to go and we’ve been through France and Germany and Poland, which was very cold. This is a winter tour, so for us it’s a lot of cold vans and loading in through the snow and stuff like that. But it’s been going really well and the shows have been great and it’s been nice to perform to new audiences. We’re going to a few places that we’ve not done a club show before. We went to Barcelona. I’ve been there to support other bands, but never done a headline show or a co-headline before, so that was cool. So yeah, it’s been great so far. 

To make a bit of an introduction for our readers, you released your debut EP in January 2019. Then you debuted live at Roadburn in April. Later in the year you toured with Sisters of Mercy and Cult of Luna. I saw you there and that’s where I found out about you. And later in the year you released your EP with Mono. That’s a lot of stuff, like a lot of big milestones for a new artist, I think. The natural question would be, how did you manage to do all these amazing things so early in your career?

A lot of it, ultimately, with things like support tours and things like that you are really at the mercy of a band either wanting you specifically and getting in touch with your agent and saying, hey, we’re going on tour, I’d like A.A. Williams to come and support, please. And that’s what happened with the Sisters of Mercy tour. So, you know, those things just come because somebody else is interested in what you do. You’re not pushing for those things sometimes. And, you know, it’s lucky to have a band that’s interested in what you do. And it’s lucky to have a situation where that happens. I mean, we’ve had that with Sleep Token recently. We’ve had that with Sisters of Mercy, where basically a band to just get in touch with their booking and say, hey, I want that person, which is great, but you’re not trying. You’re not kind of sending loads of emails about it. You’re not trying to push everybody. So those things are really out of your control. Sometimes, like the Cult of Luna tour, for example, it will be a situation where the project was submitted as an option. And the band chooses you because they think you’re cool, and that’s great. You can put yourself forward, but it doesn’t mean someone will choose you, you know? So it’s a bit of luck and a bit of this and a bit of that. You can’t control any of it, really. But it’s lovely to be in a situation where people want to take my music and to present it to their fans. And I think, like you say, Cult of Luna and Sisters of Mercy, I mean, that’s two very different things. Two very different artists who both think that what I do fits with what they do, which is really cool, because it just goes to show that it’s music that is… that there’s a variety of influences in there. And I think that helps, maybe, to be in this position where things are moving pretty quickly, because different bands want to take you out, different audiences pick up on what you do. And a combination of luck and being a bit of a workaholic and never stopping, and never stopping, and always wanting to carry on writing and working, I guess. 

I tried to look up online a bit and couldn’t find a lot of info about this, I was wondering if you had any previous bands that you played with, or… 

Not really, well, I was a session musician, I was a cellist. So, until not very long before starting to work on this project, I just played for other people, do you know what I mean? I played piano, I played keyboards, I played cello, predominantly. A lot of classical music, so it wasn’t really a project like this band, it was just getting engaged by other artists. As a cellist, often you tend not to be regularly touring with people, you tend to just be brought out for the special… Brought out for the special performances, like the big London show, or the album launch, or something. But yeah, I was just a jobbing musician, doing a bit of this and a bit of that. 

And, as you just mentioned, you play a lot of different instruments, can you walk me through your musical history?

I mean, how long have you got? [Laughs] I started playing when I was very young, I started piano when I was five or six years old, and picked up flute and cello when I was at school, and basically focused on them and narrowed down to cello and piano, and gradually through university narrowed down just to cello and focused on that, doing classical performance. And, as I said, I did jobbing performances for anybody who needed me, really. And, you know, string arranging, so kind of working on quartet arrangements for people’s records and things like that. And then picked up the guitar quite late in the grand scheme of things, and I had never really sung before, but used writing songs as a way of learning guitar. Because I just thought, well, I didn’t really want to play other people’s riffs. What was the point of that? Do you know what I mean? Sitting in my house playing Judas Priest, like, not really what I wanted to do. So I thought I’d try and write some songs, and that was the beginning of this, I guess. 

Right, so we mentioned the first year of your career with this project, and then the next year COVID hit. And that was, of course, a bit of a nightmare for all musicians, especially for someone who’s starting their career and starting to get some following. 

Not ideal time-wise, no. 

So did you have any moment of discouragement there, or was it just straight into working on new music? 

A bit of both. I mean, it’s hard not for everyone to go, oh, for fuck’s sake. When something like this happens, and obviously, I mean, the same happened everywhere, I think, pretty much, that live music was the first thing to go and the last thing to come back. So, it was very fast going from, you know, we were in the middle of a tour. We were on tour of Sisters of Mercy, it was our second tour together. It was in the UK and then into the Netherlands. And halfway through the tour, just some bits of their tour got cancelled one by one by one by one until there was nothing left to do. And so basically, everybody went home and that was that, that was the beginning of all the lockdowns in the UK and all of that stuff. And so generally it was disheartening, but I don’t think anybody realised how long it was going to last. So I think for most of us, it was thinking of ways to continue to engage an audience that nobody imagined were going to be long term. Everyone just thought, oh, this will be a few weeks, you know? So I didn’t really think too long about it. And then, I’m a sucker for keeping busy, especially when the news is all so bad and you don’t want to just sit and watch the TV round and round and round and watch all these terrible things happening. It was much better for me to have a project to focus on and to write some music. And I had a record coming out that year in the summer. And so my label asked, do you want to postpone it? Do you want to leave it for later? And I said, well, to be honest, no, because we don’t know what’s going to happen with the timing. And so probably it’s good to let this record be out in the world, no matter what the circumstances. If we’re still in a position where people are at home, people aren’t working or they’re not able to go to work, ultimately, it’s probably not a bad time to produce a record because actually people are at home, they’re online, they’re just hanging out with their friends, they kind of can’t really do much. So listening to music and engaging music is a nice way of people feeling connected to stuff. So, it was disheartening, but then I think it was disheartening for everybody. You know? 

It actually makes a lot of sense, for me your music was a big part of the soundtrack of my lockdown.
I think it was for a few people. Just because of the timing and, like, obviously the different countries all have different plans with lockdowns and isolation and all of the different kinds of restrictions that were in place, but my first album came out and it was, I think, June or July that year. And so it was right at the middle of everybody’s life changing a little bit and I guess you latch onto something because of the time that it comes out. And it just becomes, it means something different for people because of that, I guess. 

Your first EP was, I think, very melodic and centred around an acoustic sort of style to some extent. And then with every studio album you moved into a bit of a heavier sound. I was wondering if it was sort of like an evolution that came with time, or if it was always your intention to move into this direction.

I think a little bit of both. I think for some reason when someone releases their first record audiences, journalists, everybody assumes that that is a finished product. That is the beginning of a journey, not the end. It wouldn’t be the first record if it was the end. Do you know what I mean? So you put out this EP that I made in my house… it’s not going to sound as good as an EP, a record I made in a studio three years later with more experience. And so it was always my intention for it to have a weight to it and to be heavy. But people change, people evolve and I think you see it all the time. People go, oh yeah, yeah, this band’s record, yeah, yeah, it’s not as good as the first one. It’s like, hang on, that was the first one. If you wrote a novel now and another novel in ten years time, it would be different, right? It’s easy to assume that you had fully realised your entire potential on your first recording, which is not the case at all. But I think for me it’s not about deliberately evolving, it’s just about moving in whatever direction seems to make sense for me.

Your answer feels like you had this conversation a lot of times.

Not really, I just think it’s kind of, I don’t know, for me it’s obvious really, I suppose, that the first time you do anything it’s not going to be as good as the tenth time you do that!

Around the time of your first release, I found that you were mentioned in an article which talked about the so-called Death Gospel. 

I don’t even know what it is, to be honest. 

Exactly… 

That answers that. I literally had to Google what it was. There was a Metal Hammer article which referred to me and a whole bunch of other female artists under one umbrella as Death Gospel, which I don’t even know what it means. No idea. The only defining factor seems to be that we’re all women. I’ve never heard anybody describe a male singer as Death Gospel, so I don’t know what it actually is. Except a way of lumping together a bunch of female and non-male musicians who musically don’t really sound the same, so I don’t really know. 

So, this kind of anticipates my next question, which is this Death Gospel label includes only female musicians, but also, I think it’s been a bit of a trend in Metal for a number of years to try to box women musicians in some sort of labels, so you’ll have these labels like female-fronted bands, while they sound nothing alike. 

Exactly. Well, that’s the thing I don’t understand, is that musically there are not that many similarities except that we all have guitars. But that’s like saying the Beatles and Iron Maiden are the same, because they have guitars. So, I don’t really… Do you know what I mean? I think in some sense it’s probably slightly lazy journalism because it’s easier to compare an artist to another artist than to describe what they actually sound like. So, perhaps there’s an element of that as well, but I’m not sure. 

What I wanted to ask was more, do you think that using the women component of bands as a way to describe these bands, stressing that there are women playing music, could sort of actually facilitate women to have a career in music?

I’m not sure it facilitates it in a particular way, because I think ultimately what facilitates it is the songs being good, or the songs being songs that people think are relevant, or at least bringing something new to the table which isn’t just the same as what they’ve heard before. Now, whether the fact that these songs are presented with a female voice makes a difference, I don’t know. Do you know what I mean? I’ve not had an experience writing as someone who isn’t female, so I wouldn’t know, I couldn’t compare it to anything. I don’t know, I suppose there is a sense that in some way certain festivals, for example, or booking agencies or whatever, are now suddenly going, oh hang on, we need more women, we need more women. And perhaps that presents opportunities sometimes, but very much I would rather be booked because the music is what people want than because I am female. Do you know what I mean? That’s not my focus. I’m not writing from a female perspective, I’m writing from a human perspective, so I feel very much like I’m not trying to make a point out of it, I just want to write songs. And so whether that makes a difference to the opportunities I’ve had or not had I couldn’t tell.

I guess this could be part of a larger discussion about women in general, about equal opportunities and all that, but I don’t want to go there now. 

It’s a tricky one because you only know your own experience. You only know what you’ve been doing or not doing and you only know what experience you’ve had as a person operating in this industry. And let’s be honest, it’s shit for everybody. It’s a hard industry to be in, no matter who you are, I think. And obviously some people have it better than others and maybe that’s because of the connections that they might have already or God knows why, there’s so many reasons why things can work for people and not for others. But I think ultimately if you write good songs and you present them well live, then that’s half the battle.

I don’t want to really talk about genres and labels, we already talked about that, but I think that a common element in all your music is sort of a melancholic mood. Would you say that you are a melancholic person?
I would say in some way, yes. Probably in quite a lot of ways actually I am. But then, again, I’m just writing what I know, I suppose. So I’m not really thinking, oh, I must write melancholy songs, I’m just writing songs. 

And they come out like that.

And they come out like that, exactly. It’s like you’ve got to write from your own experience, whatever that is. 

What kind of bands inspire your music? If you have any band that you reference to.

I try not to reference anyone specifically. And when I write I try not to listen to many artists because I find that it’s quite easy to soak up the kind of ideas and influences without really meaning to. So I listen to a lot of classical music. I listen to quite a lot of music that’s quite far away from what I do. But then you know, we’re the sum, all of us, of everything we’ve enjoyed when we were teenagers and everything that we watched on telly when we were kids and all of that. It all soaks into who you are now as an individual. And when I was younger I listened to a lot of Radiohead, and a lot of Deftones, and a lot of Nine Inch Nails, and a lot of Placebo, and a lot of Marilyn Manson, and a lot of all sorts of other bands. And that all probably just soaks in and kind of creates some sort of form of reference which I’m probably not consciously accessing. But it influences things that I enjoy and things that I don’t in terms of the choices that I make in my own songs. 

Talking about the lyrics and since, as you said, you didn’t have experience of being in any band or project previously I guess that this is the first time you are actually handling that. How are you doing with that? How hard is it? Does it come easy to you? 

It depends on the song. I think often I get about three quarters of the way through the lyrics and then I get stuck on a few little bits and pieces. And it’s not because writing songs is particularly hard, but it’s because trying to crystallise how you feel into like five syllables that fit in this little gap can be quite tricky. To really get it to be how you feel like it should be. But yeah, I think it is interesting to try and figure out how you feel. Just to say it out loud is weird enough sometimes, let alone trying to say it in a creative way and trying to get it to rhyme or to fit with the syllables that you have. It’s quite an interesting exercise to think about how you feel about a certain subject and try to fit it into that framework. It’s tricky. But again, like you say, it’s all kind of new to me still. The more you do, the more you explore what works for you. It’ll be the same with writing or any other art form. You get the hang of the formula that works for you gradually. 

And I guess that, like you said for the music, you write about what you know, so the lyrics are also about yourself.

Yes, absolutely. I try not to write anything that’s so specific to me that other people couldn’t enjoy it. But yeah, lyrical themes, it’s trying to make it relevant to other people and make it so that… the amount of times that somebody will come and chat after a show and say, oh, I listen to this song and it means this to me. But then someone else comes to say, they’re talking about the same song, and they go, oh, it means that other thing to me. If I can write music that’s general enough that people can project their own experiences into these songs and feel differently about them then I’ve done my job. That’s the goal. 

Is there anything that you find hard to put out there because it’s too personal? 

Not really.  I don’t mind being vulnerable because I think sometimes there’s a lot of focus on not presenting that side of yourself which, I don’t know, as I get older I just think, well, no, hang on this is how I am as a human being why on earth would I… you know, it’s easy to be a person who frequently tries to mask this, cover it up, not show it to people. It’s easy from a habitual point of view just to put a lid on it and put on a happy face, but actually in song it’s probably an easier way of expressing it sometimes than it is in just real life chatting between friends, so I don’t mind that there’s vulnerability in the songs and I don’t mind that there’s a rawness to it because I think it maybe speaks to people better than some sort of deep metaphor or anything like that. The amount of people, again, that come to the shows and come to chat at the end of a gig and talk about how meaningful these songs are to them and I think, well, it’s obviously hitting the right kind of chord to people so I’m not suddenly going to reel it in and be metaphorical. I think also, bear in mind that within the greater genre, I know we’re not talking really about genres, but kind of heavy music, alternative music, Metal, whatever you want to call it, is anyone really writing about happy stuff? Do you know what I mean? I’m not sure that anyone’s writing about how great a picnic they had today or how great it was to go and see their kids school play. People are expressing themselves and exploring their emotions, and a lot of the time it’s not so fun to do that but it feels necessary.

I was looking on Setlist.FM, so it might not be 100% accurate, but…

[Laughs] Pretty close, pretty close.

It says that you’ve played 158 shows so far. 

Sounds about right. 

Which, including the pause of the lockdown, is definitely a lot, so I was wondering if you think that the live setting is the definitive dimension of your music?

I love playing live, and I think it’s a great way to show your music to people because I think there is a perfectly legitimate reason for live shows to exist alongside recorded music. They are different, they’re going to be different and I think if you go to a live show and it is exactly the same as putting your record on, what’s the point? You might as well just sit at home and listen to the thing on Apple Music or whatever and that be that, so I think from the point of view of my band and I, we’re obviously faithful to the recording but there is a difference, there always gotta be because we’re human. There’s gonna be that indeterminacy between shows every day, there’s obviously the physical volume difference which you don’t get so much from a recording, I think. I wouldn’t say it’s definitive but I would say it’s equally valid as the recorded version because, again, you know we talked about how the first album you release is the beginning, people forget that when you record that’s like the beginning of you performing these songs, not the end, you know? When I did the vocal takes with this I probably sung it like 5-6 times before actually recording it so from there it’s gonna continue to develop across live settings and all of this stuff. When you record that guitar part probably the first time you did it right is the one that’s on the recording. So it’s gonna change, it’s gonna continue to evolve.

My next question is a bit more personal, so feel free not to answer if you don’t want to. We said earlier how the music industry is a very hard place to be and for the smaller, younger bands the most common thing is to have another job to support you while you also do your music. I don’t know if this is the case for you, but if so, with all the concerts you’ve been playing, how do you manage to find the balance between the music and the other side of your life?

Oh, there isn’t any other side of life, my friend [laughs]. This is life, this is life. I’m basically in a position where this is what I do and it involves, like you say, there’s a lot of gigs, there’s a lot of stuff to do, it’s an insane amount of work to keep it going and I could take on something else but then everything would just slow, and this is really what I want to do so I’m willing to put myself in a position where basically there isn’t really much money coming in or anything like that… I’m willing to accept that because I want to put as much energy and time as I can into the project because I feel that if I were to give the songs only half of my life everything would take twice as long to get anywhere and I don’t really want that. I want to just be able to give it all that I’ve got no matter what my alternative circumstances are going to be [chuckles] I’d just rather put everything in, if I can.

So, my final question is if you’ve already started writing any new music or if you have an idea of where you’re going to go musically next.

It’s tricky, I mean, I’ve always got a list of things that I’d like to try, some of which don’t work [laughs] you know, that’s just creativity in general, that’s okay. But I’ve got a few kind of little ideas, but realistically the end of this year has been very busy. I struggle to write while on tour because there’s just so many things to get done that I literally don’t have time. You know, today the only amount of free time I have is here chatting to you now, so if you split that across a whole tour that’s not enough time to write records when you’re touring. So, when I get home from the tour I’ll start writing and, I don’t know, I tend to just sit down and start. I don’t have any grand designs of what it’s going to be or how it’s going to come out yet, I just write some songs and then I’ll fiddle about with them once I’ve got some kind of little shells and then I kind of start to fill in the gaps.