Marlon Williams' blues is still a little green

"Hello Miss Lonesome" kicks off the proceedings with a jolt of manic energy and Williams stretching his range to its upper limit. It's a record that you would expect to hear with a southern twang, but Williams’ passionate vocals and the songs uptempo gallop make it a worthwhile ride nonetheless.

As it goes though, Marlon Williams gradually sobers up and slows down, becoming a more contemplative record. Not unlike Leon Bridges, part of Williams’ appeal is supposed to be being beyond his years, but it can be a bit hard to buy at times, like his world-weary father persona on “Dark Child.”

“I lost my wife in 1989 to a certain kind of undetectable cancer,” he sings on the opening of “Strange Things,” a tale of the supernatural that positions itself as Tim Burton meets the Avett Brothers. The track is well produced, a macabre march with nuanced production, but Williams is a bit too green to embody the role of the haunted widow. It's hard to listen to the record without remembering that the singer was actually born in 1990, one year after the death of his hypothetical spouse.

“Each song is a character,” Williams said on his website of his debut. While that may be true, the singer-songwriter has a little ways to go before he’s compelling enough as a solo artist to be the vessel for all of their stories. Marlon Williams is a perfectly pleasant listen, but we’ll have to check back to see what Williams can do when his personal experience catches up to his subject matter.