He has released four albums as Tom Williams & the Boat but for his fifth, the Hastings troubadour has dropped his anchor, come ashore and is suddenly riding a quickening hype-wave, under his own name. The vintage pop-rock of All Change was recorded between classes with a student-backed band while he was artist-in-residence at Leeds Beckett University but its orchestral flourishes and even, on the track What a Shame, bursts of choir alongside an eerie organ, make it sound expensive and epic. Stylistically, Williams swings from Damien Rice acoustica on Sometimes to a whorl of psychedelic Radiohead on the refugee crisis-inspired Everyone Needs a Home, while nailing Oasis’s knack for pop songwriting. Better, though, is the monster, bourbon-laced riffage on Little Bird, as if latter-day Arctic Monkeys had done the Twin Peaks soundtrack, and the throaty urgency of Higher Place. Next year’s Brits critics’ choice award is surely his.
