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Limited Seating. First Come, First Served. Endless prairies and ocean waves; long drives and highway expanse; dancing, smoke, sex, and physical desire the core images of Jess Williamsons new album Time Aint Accidental revel in the earthly and the carnal. After a protracted breakup with a romantic partner and longtime musical collaborator who left Williamson and their home in Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic, the albums reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals a tectonic shift for Williamson as a person and as an artist: from someone who once accommodated and made herself small to a woman emboldened by her power as an individual.A daringly personal but inevitable evolution for the Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Time Aint Accidental is evocative of iconic Western landscapes, tear-in-beer anthems, and a wholly modern take on country music that is completely her own. Above everything, sonically and thematically, this album is about Williamsons voice, crystalline and acrobatic in its range, standing front and center. Last year, Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee released I Walked With You A Ways under the name Plains; a critically acclaimed record filled to the whiskey-barreled brim with feminine confidence, camaraderie, and straight-up country bangers and ballads. After past records Cosmic Wink (2018) and Sorceress (2020), both released on Mexican Summer, Williamson felt primed to shift in a new direction. Revisiting what she loved growing up, simplifying her process, and making music with a friend proved to be the best step forward for Williamson.In early 2020, while getting used to the new estrangement and in quarantine with her thoughts, Williamson wrote and recorded the stripped-back standalone single Pictures of Flowers by herself at home. This experience became the foundation on which Time Aint Accidental was built. The songs lyrical themes were terrestrial and plain-spoken, with Williamsons voice set against a drum machine and paired with textural guitar by her friend Meg Duff. Soon, Williamson realized that musically she was just as goodbetter, evenon her own. Tours with Weyes Blood, Kevin Morby and Hamilton Leithauser, and Jos Gonzlez bolstered this newfound self-assurance.Amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, Williamson began dating in Los Angeles and tracking demos centered on the realness of those experiences, filled with excitement, anxiety, and disappointment. The drum machine stuck around (this time in the form of an iPhone app), as did her determination to forge a new path as a truly solo singer and songwriter; as a woman finding the sound of herself without anyone elses input. It was a lonely, but revelatory, period. Williamson now splits her time between Marfa, Texas and Los Angeles. Time Aint Accidental, with its synthesis of traditional country instrumentation with digital effects and modern sounds, unequivocally embodies the energy of the two very different places that she calls home. The albums artwork, subtly menacing and neon in awareness and strength, displays, in Williamsons words, that supernatural forces are acting all around us, that we can trust that we will be in the right place at the right time.
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