Toward the end of "Sometimes," the opening track from her debut album, The Ones We Never Knew, Holly Williams makes a wish. "I wish I were an angel in '52," she sings, "in a blue Cadillac on the eve of the New Year." She imagines herself rescuing a "man who sang the blues." He's doomed, of course, "but maybe he is listening right now."
The poor soul who couldn't be saved, of course, is Hank Williams. And while many artists have called upon that name in song over the last half-century—for the depths it suggests, as well as the credibility it confers—few are as qualified as Holly, who happens to be his granddaughter.
That's about all you'll hear of Hank on The Ones We Never Knew, unless you consider the album's title a nod to the sainted sinner whose shadow hangs so heavily over American music. Against the odds, Holly Williams seems not to live in that shade. Her father, Hank Williams Jr., was thrust onstage to sing his daddy's songs as a child; it took him over a decade to find his own voice. Holly's half-brother, Hank III, began his career doing a Hank Sr. tribute act in Branson, and her aunt Jett has plastered his face on the cover of her new album. Holly Williams does none of these things on The Ones, ditching nostalgia to stake her claim as a '70s-style confessional singer-songwriter.
Even if she sounds nothing like him, Holly shares her grandfather's absorption with the dark side of humanity—which sometimes seems odd coming from a young woman with movie-star looks, compared with the ghostly desiccation Hank Sr. had achieved when he was not much beyond Holly's 23 years.
More importantly, she shares his knack for cutting to the heart of interpersonal politics. The Ones is filled with lovers clinging pitifully to one another, fighting to overcome misunderstandings, mixed signals and personal failings—drug abuse, in particular. It's an album that seems to take place in an empty room, with angry accusations and weak defenses echoing in a hall of mirrors. Common sense keeps coming up short against sexual desire and sorrowful longing.
Williams' singing voice can be very powerful—witness the climax of the mini-symphony "Velvet Sounds," which finds her roaring over co-producer Monroe Jones' whirlwind of synthesized strings. Williams' primary mode, though, is a near-whisper, in keeping with the intimacy of these 12 songs. Indeed, The Ones is so quiet that each musical color makes a dramatic difference—the chorus of "Everybody's Waiting for a Change" bursts unexpectedly into bloom, while "Cheap Parades" hangs suspended like ivy from Ken Lewis' drums.
The tracks are built upon acoustic guitar and piano, and the latter serves Williams better; she betrays a troubling weakness for strummy campus-quad folk on "Between Your Lines." Lyrically, she is strongest when her flair for imagery trumps her flirtation with psychobabble.
Nonetheless, The Ones We Never Knew is a surprising, heartening debut, and one that would deserve attention regardless of its creator's surname. Indeed, if she never makes another album, Holly has at least proven that being a Williams doesn't have to mean surrendering individuality or re-creating the sound of you-know-who. Surely, Hank wouldn't have wanted his family to cope with that burden. And hey, maybe he is listening right now.
—Chris Neal
