WILL STRATTON
British folk-influenced New Jersey minimalist mixes experimentation with a love of song.
If things had gone to plan, Will Stratton would now be a concert pianist. Growing up in New Jersey, the son of a college professor and a librarian, he took keyboard lessons from the age of four and was showing great promise. Then his elder brother started a ska band, and Will took up guitar too, and that was it. “Guitar was just something where nobody was telling me what to do,” he says. “I got into playing music socially and not just playing compositions by dead people.” Since then, a series of dead-ends, fresh starts and lucky escapes have led the 30-year-old songwriter to find his own means of expression. If elements of what he does seem familiar – finger-picked acoustic folk, brooding confessional songwriting and minimalist-inspired string arrangements – the way he combines them is anything but. Which is why, after five low-key albums, new LP Rosewood Almanac has been picked up for release by the Bella Union label. It was an earlier folk revival that set him on his way, when he discovered Nick Drake at the age of 14. “He was the catalyst. I started messing around with alternate tunings, and then I got into Bert Jansch and Richard Thompson, John Fahey and Leo Kottke.” What sets him apart from the current sprouting of experimental acoustic guitarists such as Ryley Walker, Steve Gunn and Jake Xerxes Fussell is an equal focus on the song. “Yes, it’s like there’s two poles that I’m trying to balance,” he says. “Guitar is pure experimentation for me and that’s what’s so exciting, but my love of songs keeps me from getting out into the weeds.” Perhaps his closest contemporary is Sufjan Stevens who, through a series of coincidences, played on Stratton’s first record in 2007. The two never met but Stevens remains a hero. “He was never afraid to seem vulnerable and, aside from being one of the greatest arrangers of the 21st century, that might be his greatest ability,” says Stratton. “I always want to dispense with any artifice as quickly as I can when I’m singing. You only have a small amount of time to grab people by the collar.” As well as raw emotion, Rosewood Almanac comes with a persuasive air of gloom. It’s tempting to attribute this to Stratton’s recent brush with testicular cancer (and two songs allude to sickness) but it’s more universal. “I try to make my music vaguely apocalyptic because I feel we’re collectively dooming ourselves,” he explains. Don’t mistake this for hopelessness, though. “It’s like Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where The Time Goes? – it’s not a song of despair even if she was in despair at the time. I want to nail that ambivalent feeling.”