Sweet Williams: Four Five

Just when you think the album is dying a slow death, Sweet Williams’ Thomas House throws a spanner in the works by releasing a triple LP.

Announced on his forty-fifth birthday, Four Five isn’t one of those revisionist concerns littered with demoes, remixes or acoustic re-works of past glories that ends up in the bargain bin two months after its release. No, this is 45 shiny new songs that pass like a blur.

There’s always been something positively off-kilter about Sweet Williams. House’s songs, filled with hairpin turns that move to places where you don’t expect. And in all this folk-inspired slowcore reversed engineered majesty, it’s down to a unique brain chemistry in how these songs shake out. It’s been House’s hallmark card since he birthed the project all those years ago with 2011’s Bliss through to the excellent 2023 self-titled release; the latter which proved to be the project’s highlight.

Four Five: An Interview with Sweet Williams

And Four Five matches up to it. Produced and mixed by House alongside Carl Jehle, Four Five is a panoramic view of the Sweet Williams story. It has it all, in what is essentially fun for all the family.

Starting with Ghost Dury. Written after a failed dental procedure that ended in House scrambling for an emergency dentist 24 hours later, the droning, wandering psych of Ghost Dury is Four Five’s longest track. Over nine minutes, it’s yet another move that goes against the grain of ‘industry standards’ and ‘business decisions’ that so many artists from generation to generation have been swallowed up by.

Not House, though; Four Five, an underdog’s memorandum that is immersed in lo-fi spirit and unbreakable from the nefarious forces. Take Waiting for Nobody – incongruous, rule-breaking slowcore in the same way that Brainiac mangled grunge. House can go the other way, too; on The Bangles of Hell, he reconstructs it back to some normal semblance, sending it back through the mainlines.

There’s more absurdity, of course. Still Not and The Blank Woman, slowcore at quarter-speed, while the off-the-beaten-track quirks of Hammering Service, New Low and Squirrel Pie underline the freeing nature of the lo-fi movement.

Glass State: In Conversation with Sweet Williams’ Thomas House

Elsewhere, House is unafraid to wear his influences on his sleeve. There’s Hood worship on Sic Box; The Fall on Send Rope; Shellac via the razor-wired Wreck, while, the deep echo of Scaping Goat finds space between Sonic Youth’s no-wave-era and Evol.

These moments see House wandering through the tall grass, and while exposing new parts within the Sweet Williams enclave, Four Five also possesses the more ‘traditional’ moments. There You Go, Rope Science, Ex Light and Very High Frequency, songs that hit a frequency where everything perfectly aligns in the mind; a reminder of why you were drawn to Sweet Williams in the first place.

Closing with the twisted electric folk of Dio Trick (featuring Simon Kaye on synths), House signs off the only way he knows how: on his own terms. With the same punk spirit as Ed Kuepper and Lou Barlow – artists writing songs in their own world with little concern for anything outside of it – the Sweet Williams concern is one that stands completely on its own two feet. Through the grainy lens of obscurity, it really is a one off, and Four Five furthers such claims. It’s Sweet Williams’ Best of without being just that.

Four Five is out now via Wrong Speed Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.