The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Ever get the feeling that somewhere along the line we took our eyes off pop music and lost it down a rabbit hole? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing. Or perhaps we lost our non-pop artists down a pop alley, and they’ve reappeared with entirely enjoyable yet wholly inappropriate bursts of melody and song. Who, as one side of music morphs into the other, is drawing the line here?

Proper Lush

Don’t ask White Williams, aka Joe Williams. Current resident of trashy hipsterville Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the 24-year-old is as baffling as the others. On his debut release, Smoke, he melds insidious synth lines, occasional bursts of white noise and stuttering percussion with shiny, globulous dollops of melody. Sometimes he sounds like Roxy Music on a night out with Crystal Castles. Other times, like a sultrier, seedier Alexis Taylor. He’ll pour his honeyed voice over fuzzier, disjointed proceedings, while still managing to whip up a lush and coherent sound.

“I enjoy listening to strange music, but I was also infatuated with watching rap and R’n’B videos as a kid,” he says. “Then, as a teenager, I would go to shows and see some pretty experimental art music - avant-garde stuff.”

Round The Twist

Certainly at times on Smoke, you can hear the hip hop influence. “It’s not the kind of music I’d listen to normally,” he counters. “My stuff is more twisted and demented - I like it to be fucked up in a certain way; a little bit more edgy and mysterious.”

Both adjectives are appropriate. Across the 10 tracks, you can hear fading synths quarrel with faulty drum machines while fuzztoned guitars attempt to intervene.

And he admits to being a fan - of a sort - of Britney Spears. “I’d like to take any song on the radio and ruin it,” says Williams, confirming his need to push the limits of oddity and pop together. Indeed, there’s a strange notion of the pop insider scrambling to get out with White Williams - someone striving to push the limits in order to make weirdness highly acceptable.