Holly Williams - The Highway

Stories

Just in terms of plausible musical credibility, how might you improve on being the granddaughter of Hank Williams and daughter of Hank Williams Jnr.? Easy, if you can: have Jackson Browne guest vocal on one of your tracks, the acoustic lament Gone Away From Me. And on others, Jakob Dylan and Derks Bentley [and Gwynth Paltrow, but that’s more in also establishing the celebrity status perhaps].

These are all essentially acoustic numbers, mainly enhanced by pedal steel in that Country nuance one would expect. The songs are generic Americana and it’s an album of a whole strength rather than individual memorable songs, with the storytelling, as on Giving Up, tending to the domestic authenticities of Country fare. Williams’ voice is full and commanding: listen to the vocal on A Good Man that begins unaccompanied until the guitar and violin gradually builds in. Its husky strength is also pleasingly foregrounded on closer Waiting on June where Paltrow’s harmonising vocal is a more than effective complement, an epic Country narrative that tells the life story of a couple’s love from meeting at 10 [where June threatens him with a baseball bat], going to war [blood on his wallet-picture of June], getting married, buying a cow and farm [or the cow came with the farm], having kids, big family meals saying grace [outdoors], kids moving off to find a love of their own, having babies, playing in the cotton fields with the dogs [I'm not sure where the grandchildren are], getting old, side by side in the nursing home, death, the good lord came and took me home, the angels let me see here every day: I await Paltrow’s cinematic rendition, told I trust in the correct chronological order – no fancy retrospective storytelling needed to embellish its homespun drama.