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Trev Williams

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TREV WILLIAMS
More lachrymose acoustic balladeering from Faringdon’s prolific songsmith, still showing no sign of morphing into Iggy Pop any time soon. Here Trev just about keeps the lid on the self-pity over three tracks, the first of which, ‘Don’t You Know Me’, might be his most accomplished vocal showing yet, for all the song’s basic old-fashioned nature.

Faringdon Folly April 2007

Follywood.. a new leisure center under the Faringdon Folly...! Also a bit about the Follys my new band

Faringdon Folly Review November 2006

More Reviews HERE

GUIDING STAR, album review by Russel Barker

Singer-songwriters are ten a penny nowadays, so you need to be good or different to stand out from the crowd. Luckily for Trev Williams he's given himself a good start with this album.

It starts off with the joyous, bouncy 'All The Demons Have Gone' and he's out the blocks and in your face. In the nicest possible way of course. The tambourine adds to an almost happy, clappy feel to the song. Keeping up the uplifting theme 'I Did It For You' is a plain summer tune, a lovely male/female duet.

'Cut In Two' is a different prospect altogether. Trev struggles manfully to hold the tune together as it shoots off in all directions before kicking into a Beatles style chorus and then disappearing into vocoderness.

'I Missed You' could be a Coldplay demo; the way Trev's voice soars magnificently. 'Girlfriend' is a slightlydelic grungy ballad but unfortunately the mid section dips. 'Hyena' is MOR folk and 'Is It Greener Now I'm Gone?' a swirling piano led tune, but a tad dull.

Come 'When My Heart Skips A Beat' he cleverly mixes up the Cure's 'Lovesong' and a Mavericks style country sway along. It's another example of Trev coming up with something innocent and interesting. And it's when he does experiment that he gets the best results.

By Russell Barker, June 2006

Nightshift review

TREV WILLIAMS - ‘Guiding Star’ - (Own Label)

Good old Trev; he’s come in for a bit of a battering in the past in Nightshift’s demo pages but merrily he comes back for more. And come back stronger if this debut album is anything to go by. Where before Trev was prone to schmaltzy romanticism, here he rocks it up a bit while occasionally showing that he’s an adept tunesmith.

Opening number ‘All The Demons Have Gone’ is standard pub rock party fare, while ‘Cut In Two’ is a basic, shouty stab at The Who, but more considered moments, like the almost dreamy ‘I Did It For You’ and ‘Hyena’, with their folky take on 60s Californian pop and unobtrusive but effective female backing vocals show his strengths. In fact backing singers Hannah Rhodes and Naomi Bullock could be the real stars of ‘Guiding Star’, whether they’re cooing softly as on ‘I Did It For You’ or chanting in more exotic north African style as on the Kashmir-gone-folk ‘Girlfriend’. Complimenting Trev’s reigned-in Robert Plant lead vocal, they add a depth to everything they’re involved with. Unfortunately the inconsistency of the album suggests Trev has stumbled on the best stuff as much by accident as design, which is perhaps an unkind thing to level at any songwriter, but the heavy-handed treatment of songs like ‘Is It Greener Now I’m Gone’, with its almost operatic bombast, and album closer, ‘If It Makes You Sad’, takes away from the essence of the songs.

Sometimes then, less is more, but as often as not the full band arrangements do give Trev more room to manoeuvre than he’d have with just voice and acoustic guitar. And compared to past offerings, ‘Guiding Star’ finds him going up in the world.

Dale Kattack
Nightshift May 2006

GUIDING STAR, album review Oxford Bands

'Girls. Huh! What are they good for?' The answer, in Faringdon-based singer-songwriter Trev Williams’ case is simple: backup vocals. The late-of-Manchester folk-rocker has surrounded himself with an Amazonian army of chanteuses, and the combination of Williams’ brilliant harmonic writing and their own technical and expressive gifts conspire to lift many of the tunes on this CD from the level of competent to that of memorable.

That said, there is a lot wrong with the record. Technically, the drum sound is shocking, as if it has been recorded in somebody’s wardrobe (that’s tough on James Dey, whose playing is flawless throughout). There are some catastrophic misjudgements: witness the piece of vocoder drivel at the end of one song which parodies an earlier Williams dud, 'Do You Miss Me?', and an ugly moment in the otherwise excellent 'Girlfriend', in which Williams loudly detunes his guitar in a puny attempt to sound experimental. More importantly, three or four of the ten-song set sound like filler. For example, 'When My Heart Skips a Beat' is anaemic piano rock, while 'If It Makes You Sad' is a colossal bore, being nothing more than a string of meaningless platitudes repeated ad nauseum over some trudging country rock.

But strip away the chaff and there are some gorgeous numbers. My favourite is perhaps the desolate, 'Is It Greener Now I’m Gone?' The song is gothic, in the nineteenth-century sense of the word: a romantic, barrelling piano riff stalks through the texture, as Williams sings of betrayed love: one can almost conjure up pictures of a doomed figure running away from some gargoyle-encrusted mansion, lashed by the elements and the curses of the ghosts trapped inside. This is signified by the astonishing modulation of the backing vocals from placid 'oohs' to shrieking operatic high Cs and culminating in a witching hour snarl. Blood-curdling, and hats off to Hannah Rhodes and Naomi Bullock for pulling off Williams’ ambitious coup.

There’s less sturm und drang in 'I Did It For You', which is quite simply a beautiful, lip-trembling love song. However, it’s far from artless: superb as Williams’ singing is (think a less distanced Cat Stevens), Rhodes’ harmonies are the standout. They are meltingly, almost painfully, beguiling and raise a decent tune into something loveable.

'Cut In Two' is clever prog-rock with the Stevens influence turned up high (for those that don’t know, Stevens could turn 'Three Blind Mice' into a five-act opera), but I prefer Williams in his normal mode of earnest acoustic balladeer rather than math-rock trickster. He is at his best in 'Girlfriend', which seems to be burdened by all the gaucheness, insecurity and pathos of first love. These feelings are evoked by myriad happy touches: the alternation of major and minor key, providing tension and the variation of Williams’ vocal from cracked, high-pitch appealing to conspiratorial mutter. But yet again, the backing singers are the real stars of the song. The strangely beautiful keening at the start is the perfect musical counterpart of the alien quality of women felt by teenage boys, while the lush, crowded breathiness of the girls’ singing in the middle has a genuine, unforced eroticism: you heard that right. Rhodes and Bullock have done what I thought impossible and made Trev Williams’ music sexy.

I sense the austere figure of the editor telling me to wrap up, so in summary: Williams has made a decent album which would have made a great EP. It will be interesting to see whether he can pull these songs off live, in the absence of a viable live band. If so, I hope he brings his singers with him: the petulant, folk rock star thing to do would be to can them all for nearly upstaging him on his own record (think Paul Simon to Art Garfunkel!) but he really shouldn’t. There is enough glory on this CD to go round.

By Colin MacKinnon.
Sunday, 23 April 2006

GUIDING STAR, album review Open View

Opening my monthly review package, was somewhat reminiscent of that Monty Python scene, where Terry Jones announces that the name of the Messiah, come to save humanity, is ‘Brian’, I found that my month’s work would be discussing the magnum opus of a bloke called Trev.

Striking a blow against stage names everywhere, Williams plays acoustic based music but fleshed out with a wealth of instruments effects and performers. With a background split between Manchester and Oxfordshire, and the contrast between the two areas, demonstrates the two strands in William’s song writing. One on hand offering numbers which informed by the gritty-yet-poppy sensibilities of Northern indie, but on the other lush introspective numbers, wish a broad sweep of instrumentation, seeming more indicative of the south-west countryside. ’All the Demons Have Gone’ kicks the album off, with the emphasis squarely on the former of these two influences. It bounces along and up into a catchy-feel good chorus, that could pass for The Coral or a variety of other full bands, rather all being the work of one man. The indie in Williams persona is brought out further in ‘Cut in Two’, it still has the catchy power of the albums opener, but with a bit more bite courtesy of a couple electric guitars. However, while willingness to experiment, is generally a plus point, it here lets Williams down, as the shifts to a clumsy vocoder coda. In other places however the attempt to make something other than just plucked primary chords and lyrical introspection, creates what are perhaps the finest moments on ‘Guiding Star.’ The album sees a trio of female backing singers backing Williams at various points throughout the album, and they are consistently employed intelligently. ‘Girlfriend’ has a captivating counter melody leaving a tension underlying Williams’ verses, which then opens out into a soft soothing chorus. The use of multi-layered vocals works again on the chorus of ‘I did it for you’ creating a sound reminiscent of Bryter Layer era Nick Drake. Even when guitars are exchanged for pianos, with the sombre balladry of ‘Is it greener now I’m gone’, it is the nigh-operatic backing that lifts the song out of the Turin Brakes tepidry.

As it breezes through ten tracks in thirty minutes, the songs of Guiding Star at times run the risk of merging into one another. As it whirls round the various aspects of Williams’ style, the impression is created is one of one long work, with standout flashes of catchy melodies, and clever arranging, rather than of stand-out or weaker tunes. Unfortunately this is both a pro and a con, since while it cohesively switches, from upbeat but edgy, to mellow and melancholy, this same continuity lets the album at times simply pass by. As the album closes with ‘If it makes you feel sad’ rather than creating a fuss about what the last 9 tracks have done, Guiding Star quietly lets itself out the back door, without creating too much fuss.

Open View, Oxford April 2006

MONTH IN MIND interview by Claire McGowan

At just 25, Trev Williams has a wealth of musical experience behind him. He' s been singing since the age of three, playing the guitar and writing songs since he was fourteen. His work has been described as 'hard-hitting.with emotion and energy', and he has recently been running popular song-writing workshops with Mind.

Trev says his song writing is a bit like a diary for him, reflecting his emotions at the time. The result is a great variety of styles emerging from his experiences and moods.

Trev's support for mental health stems from the breakdown he suffered a year after leaving university, where he graduated with First Class honours in popular music and recording. During his illness Trev had to leave his home in Manchester and move back with his parents in Oxfordshire. At this time he was unable to play or write any music: he says the memory of it was just 'too painful'.

Mind day centres, says Trev, played a 'massive part' in his recovery and well-being, and earlier last year he began running music workshops in various projects. Sharing his music with others has been extremely important to him. He says 'I feel privileged to have been able to use my experience of mental health problems, and also my musical experience in a positive way running these workshops'.

Outside of his work with Mind Trev has a busy schedule of gigging round Oxford, and has an album 'Slow Down' on release, which deals with his experiences of mental health and stress. He will also be releasing another album, 'Guiding Star', in April 2006.

A recent project with BYHP in Banbury has shown Trev that through music he can connect to people, especially young men, who may have mental health problems but do not access services.

'I feel passionately about raising awareness of mental health concerns with the general public, and look forward to working with Mind to dispel the stigma that surrounds it.'

by Claire McGowan March 2006