Joy Williams – Venus (Acoustic)

Price: P2100
LABEL: Sensibility Music
UPC: 859718068280
RELEASE DATE: 12/2/2016

2016 solo release from the singer/songwriter. Williams was one half of the four time Grammy-winning duo, The Civil Wars, and has since re-embarked on her amazing solo career. Last year, her brutally honest album Venus, her fourth solo effort, was released to critical acclaim, which NPR acknowledged as a “more adventurous pop sound” and Rolling Stone called “invitingly adventurous.” Now, the deeply moving songs from that album have been stripped down to their original format for Venus (Acoustic). The seven intimate tracks include two never-before-heard songs: “Someone to Love You (Acoustic),” as well as the title track “Venus (Acoustic).” “Before Venus was fully produced, I began by recording these songs as they were first written: with just my voice and a guitar. There was always an energy to these raw recordings, a kind of subtle mystery within the simplicity,” Williams says. “I needed to go on a creative sonic journey for myself for the full solo album, and I did. But over time, it’s like these songs kept asking me to look at them again, and share them in their rawest state. As if the music I’d taken to outer space asked to be sung on the front porch again… and I listened.”