Declaring it the most personal record she’s ever made, right down to her artwork based on the willow pattern from her grandmother’s tea sets serving as a map of memories, Mystery Park takes Kathryn Williams back to the sparse and intimate sound of her early albums, inviting you to share in the remembered moments and emotions and “give people space to hear their own.” Five of the songs are co-writes, with her collaborators contributing vocals and instruments. Her core backing musicians include Leo Abrahams on guitar, bass, keyboards, ukulele, and piano, Neill MacColl on guitar, and drummer Chris Vatalaro.
With its shimmering guitar intro, Thoughts Of My Own is a lightly and breezily fingerpicked opener with a reflective lost in reverie lyric that leans towards the notion of stillness (“These days when I don’t even get past the porch/I’m as useful in the daytime as a torch… It’s such surprise hearing morning’s drums/I’ve danced the years and I’ve done the sums/Will I just sit here until someone comes/With thoughts of my own”).
The first of two Polly Paulusma collaborations, Goodbye To Summer with its images of acrobatic swallows and the swifts is a pastoral strummer farewell to the season (“Golden September/You run through my fingers/Drip like honey from a knife/You make me remember/That summer’s almost over”) that turns to thoughts of mortality (“Only so many in a life… I may have years or I may be gone tomorrow”). Co-writer Paul Weller joins her on vocals and Hammond organ on the musically self-descriptive, guitar tinkling Gossamer Wings based on his title and the idea of spirits breaking free from constraints, again with imagery drawn from nature, here a dragonfly, on a song about charting your own course (“Did you ever find a way…To stop believing what they say/Find up from down/Sky from the ground”) but also possibly the inevitable parting of a parent-child relationship (“The only time I saw you cry/My firefly/Was turning round to say goodbye …you’re taking off/On gossamer wings/Can you make it to the moon/On those fragile things/When I’m taking off on gossamer wings/I’m scared of the corners and bumping into things”).
The second Paulusma number is the acoustic fingerpicked Tender, a contemplation of sensitivity and empathy and how that can make you vulnerable to an overwhelming flood of emotions (“when I stand in a crowd/It’s like I’m in a forest/Taking in all the feelings /Through the soles of my trainers… when I’m at a party/The beating heart in me/Is soaking
Up like a sponge/A room of emotions/All over the carpet”). It might well be titled the observationalist artist’s curse as she asks, “Why am I so tender?”
Ed Harcourt provides piano and Emma Smith violin for the following three tracks, the first being the gently strummed self-reflective crooned semi title track This Mystery, a poignant song about her father’s dementia symbolised by the image of a “broken record left in the road/All the cars went right over it, no one even swerved/Till the circle fell to pieces black dust everywhere”, but also how music holds memories (“Twisting up at the parties/Late night on repeat/Cheese on sticks you danced around as if they were feet singing ‘You give me fever oh my Peggy Lee’…You don’t need any words you can just sing along/And your voice is still the same drink /Sweet and long/And you know where you’re going/In the map of the song/All the records you shared with me over time”). And while she may sing “all of us are broken/Even love cannot complete/This mystery” there is comfort in “how a song can stay with us, past the last line”. The way she quietly slides from “Dad” into “Dadadadada” is beautifully heartbreaking.
Co-written with MacColl and Abrahams, the whisperingly sung, pastoral circling fingerpicked Sea Of Shadows with its shades of Simon and Drake returns to the parent-child theme in a song to her eldest son growing from child to adult (“I love it when you smile/It takes me back in time like a dream/To when you used to fit inside me/Now your shoes are size 13”) as she tells him “don’t explain who you are/You can wear your mysteries like a sheriff’s star/Don’t explain who you are/Why apologise for an open heart” because “We all grow into who we are”.
Harcourt on mariachi bass and David Ford on harmonica, the last of the co-writes is the Andalucian-flavoured Beth Nielsen Chapman collaboration Move Me, a simple love song asking for support when darkness (“Be my harbour/From the storm/Cause nothing’s starting to feel like it’s something bigger/And its dark hands are coming for me now”) and self-doubt (“no one but you knows what’s going on/You always said my smile was a heavy crown”) loom.
Songs can have the oddest origins; the imagery of the pizzicato plucked Personal Paradise with its drum tumbles came from her old dog Lucy’s habit of barking at the back fence…”It made me think that if she was inside the Garden of Eden or in heaven, would she bark at me on the other side?” A comfort in an afterlife with her “leaning against the wall, knowing you are all in there”.
Of a similar note, the final tracks all speak of a contentment with life for all its ups and downs. Built around piano and strings, Knew You Forever is about faith and finding your soulmate (“ knew you forever before we even spoke/I knew it was morning though I hadn’t woke”) and, echoing Joni Mitchell, the circle game of life (“I know that forever circles like a ring/And every time we reach the end/We just begin again/And you are a part of everything”). If she speaks of mornings there, Harcourt on piano, the penultimate Sunsets takes a similar carpe diem approach to savouring the unique nature each moment brings (“Not all endings are painted the same/Not all beauty can fit in a golden frame…let’s pretend that we’re the only ones/In the world”) and the transience of our time (“Bought a couple of cans for the day/Built a castle we knew would be washed away” because “We’ll be here always/We’ll be echoes/Echoes, echoes echoes…With the night at our backs and our faces lit up by the sunset”.
Finally, with a circling fingerpicked melody and music box feel, Servant Of The Flame was written for her younger son, watching him play and seeing him grow (“You’re wearing your hair longer now/I watch you more than the screen/Play me all the songs you love/When we’re in the car”) and pledging a mother’s constant love when the storms blow (“Years of me holding your hands/Now they control a land that I just don’t understand/Kindness shines right out of you and what they put you through/I’ll be always waving from this land… In a sea of thieves I’ll be your servant of the flames/When you need to reach across I’ll be the block that won’t fall away/When you reach your nemesis I’ll watch you battle it again and again and again…”).
This is her 15th studio album and, arguably, her most open and tender in its emotions, delivery and words. René Magritte once said, “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist”. Williams makes it a walk in the park.
Mystery Park (September 26th, 2025) One Little Independent Records
Pre-Order/Save: https://kathryn-williams.lnk.to/mystery-park
Live Dates
5th Oct – UK, Liverpool – Philharmonic Hall
6th Oct – UK, Cambridge – Junction
7th Oct – UK, Leamington Spa – Temperance
9th Oct – UK, Luton – The Bear Club
12th Oct – UK, Hebden Bridge – Trades Club
21st Oct – UK, Leicester – The International
23rd Oct – UK, Stockport – Strines Nightingale
24th Oct – UK, London – St Pancras Old Church
25th Oct – UK, Coventry – Just Dropped In
26th Oct – UK, Sheffield – Greystones
28th Oct – UK, Paisley – Arts Centre
30th Oct – UK, Gateshead – Glasshouse
31st Oct – UK, Bristol – The Folk House
1st Nov – UK, Uley – Prema Arts
2nd Nov – UK, Exeter – Phoenix
4th Nov – UK, Chester – Storyhouse
15th Nov – UK, Thornton Hough – Village Club
https://www.kathrynwilliams.co.uk