Marlon Williams Details New Album, ‘My Boy’, Shares New Single

June 16, 2022

Kiwi folk crooner Marlon Williams has shared his second new single in as many months, announcing his forthcoming album My Boy alongside the release of new single, ‘Thinking Of Nina’.

Set for release on 3rd September, My Boy serves as Williams’ first solo album since 2018’s Make Way For Love. Eschewing his longtime band, The Yarra Benders, My Boy saw Williams record the new album in Neil Finn’s Roundhead studios in Auckland with producer Tom Healy in late 2020.

The result is an album that arrives following years spent on hold due to a global pandemic, with Williams having utilised his involuntary downtime to reconnect with family and friends, and return to his Maori culture studies and language. As such, My Boy sees him focusing on themes of self-identity, escapism, family, and the concepts of masculinity and mateship.

“There’s a lot of male shapes on the record,” Williams explains. “Growing up an only child, I had to outsource my brothers and build a world around me. So while masculinity is a big theme, it’s really subsumed by broader explorations of vitality, and the social and cultural value placed on legacy.”

The album’s announcement follows the release of its title track last month, and comes accompanied by new single, ‘Thinking Of Nina’.

“This is a song about the dangers of wearing different faces in different places, of waging wars on multiple fronts; of having so many selves as to not be a self at all,” Williams explains. “Also at play is the dark phenomenon of White Knight Syndrome; the desire to simplify, infantilise, protect and ultimately commodify an object of desire.

“The video, imagined and concocted by the exciting duo who make up Sports Team and myself draws on the silliest stylings of the ’80s New Wave a la Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ and Duran Duran’s ‘A View To A Kill.'”