Kathryn Williams, the folk singer-songwriter long celebrated for her emotional depth and lyrical precision, releases her 15th studio album ‘Mystery Park’ via One Little Independent Records on September 26th. A deeply personal, intimate collection, ‘Mystery Park’ marks 27 years of making music. It’s a reflective, textured work shaped by time’s shifting tides.
Known for her delicate, moving voice and poetic songwriting, Williams rose to prominence in 2000 with ‘Little Black Numbers’, the self-released album that earned her a Mercury Prize nomination and became a touchstone for a new generation of British folk. Over the decades since, her output has been both prolific and shapeshifting. She’s written a novel (The Ormering Tide), hosted a podcast (Before the Light Goes Out), worked as a visual artist, collaborated with a wide array of musicians from John Martyn and Paul Weller to Ed Harcourt and Withered Hand, and released celebrated projects across genres, including her Christmas album, ‘Midnight Chorus’, with Dame Carol Ann Duffy. Her most recent release, ‘Willson Williams’ was SAY and Americana Award-nominated as well as receiving critical praise.
New single ‘Goodbye to Summer’, co-written with Polly Paulusma during an Arvon retreat, is breezy and bittersweet, a song suffused with colour. Kathryn tells us they were “outside on two wooden chairs watching the dying sunlight tip off the wings of the swallows and the swifts. The last hurrah of summer before they fly away. The seasons begin to mark more and more. How many summers do we have in one life? Will the birds fly back home? Polly writes in open tunings so the new paths to melodies felt giddying and fresh.”
With ‘Mystery Park’, Williams returns to the sparse and affecting sonic palette that marked her early releases ‘Old Low Light’ and ‘Relations’. These are songs made in the quiet margins of motherhood and memory, written over time, and recorded in close creative communion with trusted collaborators; Leo Abrahams (guitar, piano, bass, vocals), Neill MacColl (guitar, vocals), Polly Paulusma (guitar, vocals), Chris Vatalaro (drums), Ed Harcourt (piano, mariachi bass, vocals), David Ford (harmonica) & rock royalty Paul Weller (Hammond organ, vocals).
“This is the most personal record I’ve made,” says Williams. “The artwork is my own painting, based on the willow pattern from my grandmother’s tea sets. Each part of it ties into the songs – a map of memories.”
‘Gossamer Wings’ is a collaboration with Paul Weller. Built from voice notes and texts, it captures a moment of creative chemistry born at a distance, with Kathryn’s enthusiasm tempered into something tender and unforced. “My eagerness to show him I was diligent made me barge on ahead without him on this one, but we pulled it together and I calmed the heck down for the second sitting. This was based on the title that Paul had and an idea of spirits breaking free from the constraints.”
‘This Mystery’ offers one of the album’s most arresting metaphors; a record shattered in the road becomes a symbol for her father’s dementia. “Memory being unplayable in the form that it was in,” she says. “But this is a song for him, not the disease. Anyone who has had a loved one diagnosed with this cruelty will know how you just want to paint their skies blue and make everything all right.”
There are moving tributes throughout. ‘Sea of Shadows’ is for her eldest son, Louis, a warm and reflective song about watching him grow from infant to adult. “Parenthood isn’t fixed. We think we will have small kids forever, but time quickens and before we know it, we have huge humans living with us where once there was a little baby. I love singing this song and thinking of him through the different images and travelling through time”. Likewise, closing track, ‘Servant of the Flame’, is written for her younger son, Ted, and the act of simply sitting beside him while he plays video games – choosing presence, even in small moments, as an act of love. “Watching them evolve into their own identities. Seeing them struggle and hoping that they can navigate the ups and downs that we all face in life.”
Throughout ‘Mystery Park’, there’s a sense that we are being welcomed into a private, shifting landscape where time folds, memory flickers, and the interior world is given centre stage. It’s an album made slowly and with care, with contributions from some of Kathryn’s closest musical companions. In a landscape often geared toward immediacy and spectacle, ‘Mystery Park’ stands as a gentle refusal. It invites the listener to slow down, to sit with the quiet revelations of a life observed closely, lived fully, and rendered in song with grace and generosity.
“This record is for anyone who’s felt something and kept it quiet,” says Williams. “For those private echoes. I hope these songs give people space to hear their own.”
Kathryn Williams plays the following UK live shows this autumn;
5 October Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
6 October Cambridge Junction 2
7 October Leamington Spa Temperance
9 October Luton – The Bear Club
12 October Hebden Bridge Trades Club
21 October Leicester – The International
23 October Stockport Strines Nightingale
24 October London St Pancras Old Church
25 October Coventry Just Dropped In
26 October Sheffield Greystones
28 October Paisley Arts Centre
30 October Gateshead – The Glasshouse
31 October Bristol – The Folk House
1 November Uley Prema Arts
2 November Exeter Phoenix
4 November Chester Storyhouse
15 November Thornton Hough Village Club
Tickets for all shows are available here
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