Hailing from Cambridgeshire, Limes Hotel is Williams’ second album one that, recorded with longtime collaborator Nick Kozuch and featuring guest vocals from Dear Wife, comes with a deeper production as, informed by the passing of two close friends, it explores the renewing cycles of nature, the mind’s strange logic and those small moments that tie us to one another.
Again his vocal delivery recalls a less emphatic Luke Jackson, the album opening with the whisperingly sung ‘Saints In The Trees’ which, featuring foreboding string arrangement was inspired by an eerie encounter with a statue at Anglesey Abbey and sounds a cautionary note about not believing everything you’re told and being “careful what you do with the truth”, the political subtext being about smooth talkers’ promises.
A nervy guitar line drives the rhythmically percussive ‘Seeds’, a high-voiced spooked meditation on life after death (“our roots/Don’t disappear/They’re out of sight /But always near”) built around the rustle of real twigs and leaves with the slightly unsettling refrain “Down here/Amongst the seeds/Underground /Will you wait for me?”
More strident is ‘Strange Things We Are’, a reflection on the inaccurate and often cruel narratives we tell ourselves (“Your version of the truth/Is slipping through your fingers/And one day a sense of loss/Will be all that really lingers /But there was a time when/You wouldn’t believe that you/Are where you are now… the easiest mind/To deceive is your own”). Of a more mellow nature, the fingerpicked fluttering ‘Ends’ with its resonant piano notes echoes ‘Seeds’ with its acceptance of life cycles and the inevitability of return as the threads meet up again while the airy ‘Flicker of Light’ with its tolling of a bell percussion is a self- encouragement in times of despondency to “pull up your socks” and “don’t be afraid of yourself/Don’t you be anyone else/And don’t live a life less”.
The album’s most pastoral sounding track with its flowing fingerpicking and brass ‘Knocking For Reasons’ examines a shifting conscience (“The points on my compass have seen better days… So when my conscience starts to speak/I just pretend that I’m asleep… I now pay no mind to consequence/So I always know/That it is not my fault”), the snares shuffling in for the jaunty refrain playout “if I can convince myself/Of all this /All of the time/I’ll be alright”.
Opening with the lines “It’s a sight no mother should see/Her child lifeless amongst the leaves”, the slow and steady strummed ‘Village Green’ relates to a tragedy with his own community and the subsequent gossip and rumours (“Stories made their rounds/Where wildflowers now abound/Doubts begin to swell/They are cruel and know you well”) and the prayer that “When the silence falls/After the last of their calls/I hope that you find /It gets easier with time”. Described as “about all the people I’ve lost and those I will inevitably lose at some point”, the strings-adorned ‘Ready’ muses on impermanence (“Ready, I’m not sure I’ll ever be/For you to leave”_while, presumably after a new arrival, celebrating “the branches of our family tree”.
It grows darker with ‘Milk & Medicine’ which returns to the undercurrent theme of the opening track, and accepting things without question (“The best lies/Are the ones that hide in plain sight/Forever disguised by lures/Of what you should, not what is right”) with its striking image of “We’re as infected as the teat”.
The penultimate track, ‘Full Moon’ takes the pace up to a locomotive shuffle and heady sonic bursts for a cautionary tale of greed and envy (“You’re at the table in your mind/Gorging at the feast/But before you know you’re in the belly of the beast”) that summons a mood that marries Kate Bush, Nick Cave and Jethro Tull.
Opening with distortion, it ends with ‘Hollows And Branches’, a tribute to a late friend who passed after a difficult illness and instilled in him a love of nature and the message that “rich isn’t happy and sad isn’t poor/Love’s one of few things worth fighting for”, echoing ‘Seeds’ in leaving him with the words “When I’m long from this world, too far to be seen/In the hollows and branches you will find me”.
The Limes Hotel is open for business, you should book a room.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.lukejameswilliams.co.uk
‘Full Moon’ – official video:
We all give our spare time to run folking.com. Our aim has always been to keep folking a free service for our visitors, artists, PR agencies and tour promoters. If you wish help out and donate something (running costs currently funded by Paul Miles), please click the PayPal link below to send us a small one off payment or a monthly contribution.
Thanks for stopping by. Please help us continue and support us by tipping/donating to folking.com via
You must be logged in to post a comment.