The Beat Surrender

While anyone with a hint of a fewmale hormone and half a decent voice is currently being snapped up by record companies and marketed back to us as the next big thing, some female singer-songwriters are quietly going about their business as they’ve always done.

Playing live and wowing people and delivering top notch album after top notch album. One person who definitely sits in this group is formerc Goya Dress and now solo star, Astrid Williamson. She’s played with some of the best on stage and has contributed vocals to projects for Oskar and Electronic.

2009 will see the release of a brand new album from her, the 4th to date as a solo artist and possibly the most confident and brash release so far, it’s rockier in the music and mixed with the ever personal lyrics it’s a strident record that were sure is going to get great reviews on it’s release.

I caught up with Astrid recently for a quick interview inbetween us both becoming Twitter addicts.

If we can start by jumping back a bit, you earned a degree in music, do you feel it has given you a better grounding and base with your music in comparison to artists that haven’t gone down that route?

Learning how to read music etc. is like learning French. It makes things quicker when you’re in France, but it doesn’t fundamentally change what your going to say.

After the degree your first taste of success in the music industry came with Goya Dress, what went wrong for you to go your separate ways after just one album?

I think the label just got cold feet and Goya Dress was utterly out of step with the whole Brit pop explosion at the time. There was no inter-band-mate poisonings or anything. Actually Terry De Castro has just done an album of covers ‘La Casa Verde’ and she performs not one but TWO of my songs! I love her and the album sounds great.

Do you have any regrets about that period in your career?

Only that I didn’t enjoy it enough. Being in a band and playing music is great.

Since then of course you’ve gone from strength to strength with your solo career. How did you find the initial process of writing and recording as a solo artist compared being in a band?

It’s lonlier. You can’t play poker by yourself. You can’t play the drums by yourself either, if you don’t play the drums.

The albums have been really well received, were you prepared for if the reviews hadn’t been as favourable?

I was once wished dead in the press, with potatoes planted on my head. Nothing ever bothered me much after that! It’s all just someone’s opinion anyway. You say potatoes. I say pot-A-toes.

Your 4th solo album is due for release shortly, it sounds on first listen that it’s a rockier album, is that a fair assessment and if so, what inspired that change in your sound?

I just felt like a change. I used to play the electric guitar all the time. There’s only ONE note of acoustic guitar on the Vikings, it’s a good note but there is only one, on Falling Down. Now I want to do a completely stripped back piano album next.

What else can you tell us about the album?

Well it’s a bit dense (in the non-IDIOT way). It’s been challenging to get it together for live. There are trumpets and tubular bells and strings and about a million guitars, man it’s like a Facebook party run riot, who didn’t come along?

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