Kelly Kirwan
Ella Williams’ timbre is haunting. It's a fluttering, spectral soprano, an unearthly lure for all those who listen. With her first soaring octave our fate is set, and we would damn near follow her anywhere. Which raises the question: what exactly are we getting ourselves into?
Slipping into her musical persona, Squirrel Flower, Ella Williams’ latest EP, Contact Sports, is an odyssey into the poignant, personal experiences that shape one’s identity. Beneath her delicate pitch there’s a certain rawness that grips us, one that's foreboding and not to be fucked with. And perhaps that’s what’s haunting about Williams’ impressively undulating pitch—it’s rustling around and reflecting on the moments that burned her. She’s collected the pieces of herself that have cracked and sealed them together again with strands of gold, like a musical kintsugi.
The opening track, “Not Your Prey,” is sultry, buzzing with a heavy dose of string resonance for a grainy feel. This tough exterior is offset by Williams’ ethereal pitch, which wafts between the fuzzy instrumentals like rays of light peering through storm clouds. It seems she has found peace even while engulfed in a creeping sense of chaos. “Feel you lurking, on the move… / But if you touch me I won’t be still / You’re no predator, I’m not your prey / I’m not your kill,” she warns, as her voice melts gently into the airwaves. It’s a stirring song, one that elicits a few glances over your shoulder, as if a shadowy figure is just a few steps behind. In her own words, the song grapples with “reclaiming the space,” and she sings of newfound strength.
Then there’s “Hands Melt,” which begins with elongated guitar strums, each subsequent note bleeding into the other in a sweetly subdued blend. Williams layers her nightingale pitch, a chorus of sky-high falsettos rising and falling together, as effortlessly as an exhale. She keeps a languid pace with the lyrics, letting each thought morph slowly into existence. “You make my hands melt / You run instead of walk / Whistle instead of talk.” It’s as if her very thoughts have been set loose, swirling in the air around us, and by a stroke of luck we’re able to listen. It’s a deeply intimate exchange.
Contact Sports was written in central Iowa, one of the two locations that Williams lists as her home (the other is Boston). Elements of folk abound across her EP, her forlorn wisdom and wavering voice weaving together narratives in her melodies. She has a presence that’s hard to capture in words—and yes, I know that's a cop-out. But it's worth experiencing for yourself.