‘I did not want to be small any more’: Jess Williamson on fate, Plains and her breakout fifth album

At The commencement of 2020, things were coming up Jess Williamson. The Texan songwriter was astir to merchandise her 4th album, Sorceress. Its restrained state opulence was turning much heads than her earlier records had. She was happily in a four-year narration pinch different musician. But by The clip The medium was released in May, The pandemic had killed immoderate chance of touring, limiting its potential. And her fellow had left.

“I was really acrophobic and sad, and really alone,” says Williamson, 35, speaking from her “hobbit house” in Los Angeles. She wasn’t conscionable heartbroken, but despondent astir her career. “The first medium we made together,” 2018’s Cosmic Wink, “was The 1 wherever I sewage a grounds woody and things started really happening. When we collapsed up I was truthful acrophobic that I couldn’t do it without him.”

What Williamson had near was masses of clip to write. She released The first opus she finished, The dusky lament Pictures of Flowers, and realised: “I Can do this, really – I’m allowed.” So she kept writing, inspired by her breakup and her determination to reconstruct her dissipating momentum. “It was The astir prolific I’ve ever been,” she says.

Williamson showed The songs to a friend who said that 2 of them sounded rather different to The rest, pinch “a much universal, timeless and classical tone”. Later that year, erstwhile she and her friend Katie Crutchfield, AKA Waxahatchee, discussed starting a band, those tracks became The foundations for The down-home state popular duo Plains: in 2022 they released an immaculate debut, I Walked With You a Ways, which received wide acclaim and switched galore listeners connected to Williamson’s songwriting. In The remaining songs, she says, “I felt a existent clear sound of my ain coming through.”

They became Williamson’s awesome 5th album, a mid-career arrival. The confident, breezy Time Ain’t Accidental sounds arsenic wide and caller arsenic a dewy dawn horizon, pairing classical state choruses pinch strikingly spare production. Many songs characteristic The iPhone drum instrumentality that Williamson demoed on, kept astatine The encouragement of Bon Iver shaper Brad Cook, who besides did Plains’ album. The lightning-strike artwork nods to Smog’s spooked Knock Knock and The Judds’ glorious River of Time, references that encapsulate The sound well; you mightiness besides ideate Taylor Swift’s return connected Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels connected a Gravel Road.

That sound Williamson felt coming done is hyper-alert and vivid arsenic she swerves and swaggers betwixt her post-breakup anger, desperation and desire. Time Ain’t Accidental is truthful overmuch bigger than her earlier, subtler records, delivering emotions that women are often told are unbecoming in a recently brazen twang. “So galore legendary songs written by men are celebrated for being cocky, overtly sexual, desperate, angry,” says Williamson. “I had tried for years to make myself smaller and not measurement connected excessively galore toes, to please. After my best-laid plans blew up in my face, I had thing near to lose.”

Meeting Williamson complete Zoom, it’s difficult to ideate her shrinking herself – she’s truthful exuberant, forthcoming astir belief growth, a past travel to Cornwall to trace her heritage, and activity arsenic a recently azygous person. She’s ever been self-assured, she says. “As a mini small kid, I was telling everyone: I’m going to beryllium a vocalist erstwhile I turn up. There was nary uncertainty in my mind.” She discontinue an MFA in photography in New York to move backmost to Texas to prosecute euphony despite, arsenic her mum pointed out, not having a set astatine The time.

Yet Williamson trim a spectral beingness connected her self-released debut album, 2014’s Native State. “I was really into freak-folk,” she says, citing The weirdo US segment led by Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, Williamson’s enduring hero. “For a batch of years I felt for illustration I wasn’t weird capable for The weirdos and I wasn’t cool and normal capable for The cool, normal girls. I felt, well, if I excavation down heavy and definitive a batch of symptom and darkness, that’s going to beryllium capable for The weirdos to judge me.”

It mirrored a taste infinitesimal in which it often seemed arsenic though a woman’s creation was only arsenic morganatic arsenic her trauma. “I must person absorbed that connected immoderate level,” Williamson agrees. “Women needed to beryllium truthful exceptional to moreover get immoderate respect, and I really wanted to beryllium respected arsenic an artist.” It was touring pinch Kevin Morby in 2016, up of releasing her 2nd album, Heart Song, that shifted Williamson’s perspective. “I’m opening for him solo, playing my slow, sad, quiet songs,” she says. “Then each nighttime his set and The assemblage were having truthful overmuch fun. I was truthful inspired, it really changed my life.”

Williamson, now surviving in Los Angeles, had already started penning Cosmic Wink. She drew from The state euphony of her puerility for an medium astir her caller narration pinch a chap musician, which saw her motion to Mexican Summer. The title, she said then, acknowledged The kismet of their romanticist and imaginative collaboration. But Time Ain’t Accidental frames The narration arsenic 1 that diminished her. “Stepped truthful acold retired of The measurement now nothing’s location astatine all,” she sings connected The nervy Something in The Way, complete choppy, unsettled woodwind.

“I really believed that this personification was my soulmate and that it was up to maine to make it activity astatine each costs,” she says now. As her profession grew towards Sorceress, tensions emerged. “There were typical moments happening that I wanted to beryllium capable to share, and I felt for illustration he didn’t really observe maine because I deliberation he was truthful resentful that he had fixed maine truthful overmuch and possibly wasn’t reaping The benefits in The aforesaid way. I fed into that because I believed it, too.”

‘This grounds is grounded in religion that things are moving retired in their ain time.’ Photograph: Jackie Lee Young

When Williamson’s narration ended, she focused connected her individual growth. It’s incredible, she says, really “our full extracurricular world changes erstwhile our soul world changes. My music, my singing, my songwriting sewage amended because I did not want to beryllium mini immoderate more. I stepped into my fullness arsenic a female and a singer.”

You Can perceive The quality connected Time Ain’t Accidental, afloat of large vocal performances that person a conversational ease. Where Williamson erstwhile focused connected perfection, Cook encouraged her to embody The stories down The songs and to clasp philharmonic ideas that she had worried were excessively “crazy” for her, for illustration those woodwinds. “In The past I tried to make myself look for illustration I wasn’t trying excessively hard,” she says. “Now I’m really trying very difficult because it’s important to me. It’s OK to springiness it your all. I had thought that level of power was grating to The receptor – for illustration your sound should beryllium sexy aliases breathy.” She admits: “There’s immoderate ingrained misogyny there.”

Time Ain’t Accidental is, in parts, a genuinely sexy grounds precisely because it’s bold, not coy. “That’s my lingua in your rima / That’s each my windows down / What’d you return maine for? / Take maine for a ride,” Williamson yearns connected The salt-washed Topanga Two Step, 1 of respective songs astir her first forays into dating. At schoolhouse in Texas, activity acquisition was abstinence-only. Williamson was a precocious bloomer, past a serial monogamist. Once lockdown lifted, she says, “it was breathtaking to yet beryllium azygous and explore. It was this intersexual clip of a batch of possibilities.”

Ultimately she concluded that app-based making love wasn’t for her. “I’m a huntsman for The existent thing,” she sings dreamily connected The azygous Hunter. (She besides speaks openly astir her desire to go a mother.) The title way is an relationship of unexpectedly uncovering emotion pinch an aged acquaintance connected a roadworthy trip, reference each different Raymond Carver by The pool. They’re still together. “I’m in a narration pinch a personification who loves maine for precisely who I am, who encourages maine to beryllium big, moreover down to my body,” she says. “I consciousness assured embracing my curves and dressing sexier onstage.”

That’s different reclamation. Williamson utilized to deliberation that “embracing beauty wasn’t serious”, she says. After The pandemic, she craved razzle-dazzle, which Plains maximised: “We really embraced larp-ing arsenic state stars, being ace sparkly.” Even for today’s 9am Zoom she’s wearing a resplendent floral dress.

With a buzz astir Time Ain’t Accidental, it feels arsenic though Williamson is connected The cusp of something. “I consciousness really ready,” she says, and admits that had things gone to scheme pinch Sorceress, she wouldn’t person been. That’s The large instruction she’s learned: “This grounds is really grounded in religion that things are moving retired in their ain time.” It reminds her of a building that she loves: “Let spell and fto God,” she says, grinning astatine The bumper-sticker biblicism. “I’m not in control, actually. I’m really not, and trying to power everything doesn’t usually lead to a bully place.”