Sweet Williams - Sweet Williams (2023) [Hi-Res]

The self-titled album implies a sort of finality, doesn’t it? Or at least that this is the definitive article somehow.

Thomas House has been making music for a long while now. Maybe long enough to know better. First as the driving force behind Charlottefield and then as a team player with acts as diverse as Picore, Sloath, Joeyfat and Haress. When Charlottefield disbanded, House changed things up. No more would his personal musical endeavours be dependent on the complex politics of the ‘band’. Be gone practice room arguments! Inter-group passive-aggression: get in the sea! Like Palace Brothers or Smog, Sweet Williams may have a band name but to all intents and purposes this is solo music, albeit with a stellar supporting cast of musicians when time and serendipity allows (or doesn’t).

Obviously at Wrong Speed we think all the records we release are the work of geniuses or we wouldn’t release them. But the body of work House has created genuinely approaches the G word. Like – for example – The Fall, dipping in and out of the back catalogue across the years might not reveal any huge changes in direction. House has always worked with a purposefully limited palette of sounds and stuck to the idea that the human voice and electric guitar is enough to communicate with. But for those paying close attention the change over the years has been revelatory. Youthful surface intensity and aggression falls away and is replaced by an elegance and mystery few others possess. What was once yelled with force is now sung with great beauty and is yet more commanding because of it. Instruments are caressed instead of pummelled creating a ringing, resonant wonder of infinite possibilities. Notes sound like they could hover forever, the rhythms dragging like the human heart, the ring of the strings against each other suspending time. How the fuck is this music written? Seriously? Surely it just landed here, out of the sky? Or grew out of the ground?

"Sweet Williams" is economical and direct. Its languid pace at first appears hard to penetrate. The immediate flavour is one of loneliness and of absence. There are no immediate ‘bangers’, no radio hits.

“We did it in a tiny basement room on the East Side of Zaragoza, just South of the Ebro. When it rains heavily, we have to go over there and take all the stuff upstairs before the fucking place floods” - House

However, as with all of House’s work, tiny moments of light welcome the listener in. The sudden warmth and beauty of Settlement, the wild guitar solo (courtesy of Cristian of Picore) on Old Smoke, the occasional jarring lyric to recalibrate the listening experience (“The fucking birds are back”, “Bring me my darts and expire”) - "Sweet Williams" proves House’s most melodically adventurous record to date, scattered with surprises that delight and reward. Like most of your favourite albums, each song slowly reveals itself as a perfect micro-world, forcing you to drop the needle back again to make sure you didn’t imagine it (you didn’t).

So: is this the definitive Sweet Williams article that the title suggests?

Of course not - the definitive article is the work as a whole. Every last second of it. Every LP, demo, live gig, CDR, Tape, 7”- idea - that House has generated (and there are a lot of them) is part of one complete, ever-expanding album deserving of your attention and affection.

Is it the most complete, most rewarding album that House has made to date?

Absolutely.