You'd be hard pressed to find a smoother Kiwi export than Marlon Williams.
The singer-songwriter and actor brings a tenderness to his craft that reminds the soul of beauty.Beginning his career steeped in the country tradition, Williams' gentle falsetto and touching lyrics brought a modern renaissance to its appeal, forging a bridge into the alternative arena. This led to supporting the likes of Paul Kelly, Kasey Chambers and Bruce Springsteen.
Williams grew up singing harmony and playing guitar, even touring Europe with his school. He recalls sweet childhood memories of harmonising. "There's no watershed moment, but the confines of the car are a really nice place to hit that harmonic stride.
"I remember road trips with mum, where it's the two of us, and she can harmonise mum. We hit the triad, and I remember the car vibrating at the right frequency."
Group singing would follow Williams' life around, and he now has many fond memories of special moments singing together in front of huge audiences.
"I've got the auspicious, only child, frontman birthday of New Year's Eve, so there's been a couple of occasions when I've had a whole crowd of people singing Happy Birthday to me. Everyone's already hyped up for New Year's, so that feels pretty good, I must say."
Williams will be gracing Splendour In The Grass in July for the first time, alongside Lizzo, Mumford & Sons and many more. "I'm very excited. It’s obviously a festival of great esteem.
"It's been going for a long time, and I feel very lucky to be right at the forefront of it. It's gonna be a good time, because there's a few acts I wanna see. It's always hard festivals, you never have as much time as you think you do. So hopefully I'll be able to go and see a bit of music."
Williams' third album 'My Boy' marked a sonic and thematic shift from country into a brighter, poppier folk sound, reflecting Williams' own shift over the course of the pandemic.
"I think everyone's shifted over the pandemic, probably in ways they don't fully understand themselves. When you're the frog boiling in the pot, it's hard to know what the temperature is from day to day. But, I was lucky in that I managed to do a very comprehensive solo tour around New Zealand in the middle of the pandemic.
"It was a two-hour show of just me on stage by myself, so I think I developed. It feels a little bit more easy on stage since that tour, from having to face the whole audience by myself every night for the course of a month.
"It's made me a bit more bold and sunny, reflecting the sunniness of the record and that confidence building time over lockdown. I love it all (performing solo and with a band), but having all the power and all the promise of failure in your own hands, there's something sort of giddy about the power."
Songwriting, Williams reflects, proves most fruitful when he releases control. "Generally, I find that I have to be doing menial tasks to really get flowing. I need my brain to be busy doing other things, otherwise I get the microscope out and I'm too aware.
"I used to work in a milk bar in my home town from the age of about 14 to 21, and that was probably my most fertile creative period, just because I didn't have to think too hard about what I was doing. It feels like enough room to create in the background. It's a flow state, I guess."
When considering the strengths and weaknesses of the current industry, Williams balances both sides.
"Accessibility is obviously a big one. I'm still grateful, despite whatever shortcomings are in my head, that there's a pool for paying artists and grateful for my Spotify account. I'm grateful that people are able to put out music as they see fit.
"The democratisation of the cultural space is really exciting. But the flip side of that, the thing that annoys me most about the industry today is definitely the felt need to have 360 access to an artist.
"Like music biopics. I get why people wanna watch them. It's like when you see a good horror movie and it freaks you the hell out and you're there fiendishly on Wikipedia trying to find reasons for it to have been this way. There's a certain amount of mystery and space that's been compromised.
"We're trying to have our cake and eat it too. Everyone wants to know what the song's about. I'd rather talk about how things come to be, rather than what they are. I think over-explaining things is the death of art."
The multitalented Williams acted and sang in Bradley Cooper's 'A Star Is Born', singing during the Roy Orbison tribute scene. It was a perfectly LA experience.
"I'd just been on tour and I played a show in LA, and it was the show I found out that he was at later. It was a classic, postcard of an LA experience. So it's along with the fantastical nature of that gig, as to how tinselly it felt, it was in keeping that that email followed it up.
"I could feel something silly in the room, so weirdly enough, it made sense, it was consistent. But it was also, upon looking back, utterly bizarre. Just one of those weird sliding doors moments where someone happens to hear something on the radio and then comes to a show, and then it just happens to fit the mould of whatever Bradley was envisioning at the time."
Reflecting on being born in any other time period, Williams expressed the desire to understand his own ancestry.
"I'd love to go back to pre-European colonial New Zealand. So much about Indigenous experience these days is trying to find some sort of purity of experience, for what it means to be an Indigenous person. That would be interesting, to get a feel for what it was like. But we can overly romanticise things too. It'd be rough. It's rough to live anywhere in the world at that time."
Marlon Williams plays Splendour In The Grass, which runs 21-23 July.
Splendour In The Grass 2023 Line-Up
LizzoFlume (AUS Exclusive: 10 Years Of Flume)
Mumford & Sons (AUS exclusive)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Hilltop Hoods
J Balvin
Sam Fender
Idles
Ocean Alley
Little Simz
Danny Brown (AUS exclusive)
Tove Lo
100 Gecs (AUS exclusive)
Arlo Parks
Ball Park Music
Iann Dior
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
070 Shake
Pnau
Ruel
Loyle Carner
Benee
Marlon Williams
Thelma Plum
Hooligan Hefs
Peach PRC
Pussy Riot
Palace
Dune Rats
Tkay Maidza
Noah Cyrus
Skegss
Sudan Archives
Cub Sport
Meg Mac
X Club.
Claire Rosinkranz
Jack River
The Smith Street Band
Lastlings
Jeremy Zucker
Young Franco
Sly Withers
May-A
The Vanns
Telenova
Vallis Alps
Jamesjamesjames
Kaycyy
RVG
Teenage Dads
Balming Tiger
Automatic
Harvey Sutherland
Gali
Del Water Gap
Royel Otis
Shag Rock
Big Wett
Mia Wray
Memphis LK
Gold Fang
Milku
Sumner
Forest Claudette
Full Flower Moon Band
William Crighton
Hellcat Speedracer
Triple J Unearthed Winners
Plus Mix Up DJs
Tseba
Crybaby
Latifa Tee
Foura
CaucasianOpportunities
Luen
Mowgli
Dj Macaroni
Crescendoll
