Holly Williams – The Ones We Never Knew review
Posted by RNS Robot on January 3rd, 2010
HOLLY WILLIAMS – The Ones We Never Knew
Released 2004
Universal South Music
www.hollywilliams.com
My goodness. I love this girl. I wonder if she bled into the studio microphones and all over her guitar? Because it sounds as though she’s given most (if not all) of herself on a record containing heartbreak, hope, insight and wisdom of a sort more befitting her famous and aging father (Yes, that Williams. Hank Williams Jr.) than a woman of only twenty-something years. The music? Beautiful melancholy country/folk accentuated by appropriate and sweeping strings, lap steel, jazz drums, organ. And the lyrics, my goodness. Every word like a laser, so poignant and incisive, not shying away from the mess of love, loss, brokeness and faith. I don’t know if she is a Christian but she sings, in a song called “Between Your Lines”, the words “You don’t have to smile/I can read between your lines/I read guilt and I read mercy/I read glory to the Father” and “Why do you cringe at the wake of every godly dream? / I watch you laugh on the brink of insecurity.” There is real hope and real light in her songs. “You know I’d love to help you, you know I’d love to heal, but without the hands of God you will never be revealed.” Sometimes the honesty and tragedy is overwhelming, the scars too clear, the wounds too raw and you almost find yourself wishing for a ‘light’ song to break things up, but than you gloriously just… you just FEEL. You feel so deeply in all those places you forgot feeling was possible.
“Tell me something true/even if it hurts.” My goodness. I love this girl.
Tags: 2004 Releases, Holly Williams