Jerry Williams - New Waves

She sings songs about being the obsessive stalker type and trying to make someone love her when they don’t, but despite the slightly scary over clingy girlfriend possibilities, there’s a lot to adore about Jerry Williams, a relatively new Portsmouth based singer songwriter. First and foremost there’s her voice. She has a light chirpy tone that's almost cheeky and delightfully sugary in its nature, but she can do sadness as well, turning a cover of Mr Probz's Waves into something a little bit teary.  Certainly her vocal couldn’t be confused with her namesake, Swedish rock ‘n’ roller and actor Jerry Williams.

Secondly there’s her sense of enthusiasm and eagerness to perform and play. You can see it on her SBTV performance of her song Boy Oh Boy, a track that was co-written Jim Duguid (Paolo Nutini and Alex Clare), and by the fact that at one music festival last year (Victorious) Jerry managed to rack up five performances on different stages during the course of the weekend. This keenness as well as her talent is winning her some recognition; she romped home with her local paper’s best solo artist award last month (runner up was Breaking More Waves championed Eloise Keating) and has already completed writing sessions with the likes of Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Nick Mulvey, Bat For Lashes), Newton Faulkner and Carey Willets (from Athlete). Now she gets the Breaking More Waves treatment and introductions.

Now you can find Jerry uploading a series onto the internet called The Portsmouth Independent Sessions where she plays in her favourite independent shops and cafes in the Portsmouth area. From those sessions we’re streaming her latest, the rather pretty Film Noir, which was shot in an antiques emporium.

It’s still very early days for this singer songwriter, but with a vocal so charming and a developing catalogue of songs, we’d be silly not put her name in the top drawer marked one to watch.

If you’re in London this week you can do that watching yourself as Jerry Williams plays The Old Queens Head in Islington this Wednesday.

Jerry Williams - Boy Oh Boy (SBTV)



Jerry Williams - Film Noir (Portsmouth Independent Sessions)