Consumer Guide Album

Kathryn Williams & Withered Hand: Willson Williams [One Little Independent, 2024]
In the early teens, when he enjoyed a spell as a gifted minor cult figure on the U.K. folk-rock circuit, Withered Hand, the Biblical professional name of Edinburgh-based lapsed Jehovah's Witness Dan Willson, put out a smatterring of albums that tried to pin down the meaning of a love he seemed to figure was as close to God as he'd ever get. On the 11 uncompromisingly tender and lovely songs he shares with 50-year-old veteran Williams here, how literally autobiographical I have no idea although they do make it sound that way, especially onthe one that includes the startling couplet "Like the first time that you blew me/I'm not hung like an elephant but I got agood memory." Autobiographical? For these two at this moment, that's not the point. In the very same song, "I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend my time with than you babe" is the point. A-