New Zealand’s Marlon Williams will release his sophomore album, Make Way
For Love, on February 16th via Caroline Australia. Known for his effortlessly
distinctive voice, Make Way For Love marks Marlon’s exponential growth as a
songwriter. Throughout 11 original songs, he explores new musical terrain and
reveals himself in an unprecedented way in the wake of a fractured relationship.
In conjunction with today’s album announcement, Marlon announces an
international tour and shares the album’s penultimate track, “Nobody Gets
What They Want Anymore,” a duet with ex-girlfriend Aldous Harding, recorded
after the two broke up via a late-night long distance phone call, and
it’s accompany video.
While Make Way For Love draws on Marlon’s own story, a new area for him
after conscientiously not sharing his own life in song in the past, it captures
the vagaries of relationships we’ve all been through: the bliss, ache,
uncertainty, and bitterness. Like the best of breakup records, Make Way For Love
doesn’t shy away from heartbreak, but rather stares it in the face, and mines
beauty from it. Delicate and bold, tender and searing, it’s a mightily
personal new step for Marlon.
Make Way For Love was recorded with producer Noah Georgeson and his backing
band, The Yarra Benders, in North California’s Panoramic Studios after
several weeks of pre-production in his native Lyttelton, New Zealand with
regular collaborator Ben Edwards. The finished result moves Marlon several paces
from “country”—the genre that’s been affixed to him more than any in
recent years, but one that’s always been a bit too reductive to be wholly
accurate – with forays into cinematic strings, reverb, rollicking guitar and
at least one quiet piano ballad.