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SOUND CHANGES Ezra Williams (formerly known as Sm
oothboi Ezra) has a new single, a forthcoming show and a slot to play for Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition. They’ve supported Orville Peck, Jungle and Pillow Queens to date and had their single feature on Netflix’s teen drama Heartstopper. The evolution of this 20-year-old talent continues apace. Backed with full and fairly thumping percussion, Ezra Williams’ (formerly known as Smoothboi Ezra) new single Deep Routed offers a thoughtful and lyrically heart-rending look at self-rejection at a physical, visceral level. A queer sense of relatability hits hard, too, as they confess to be ‘‘guilty from a kiss, rejecting your hand.” Moments later, ‘‘I like your skin,’’ follows before they point out, ‘‘just not on mine.’’ Here, Williams explores a sound that is warm and vibrant while still feeling live and direct, with a burgeoning and compellingly emotive breakdown. It’s a lot more detailed than the bedroom style they are perhaps best known for, and it’s all down to the process. Speaking to me on a spring afternoon, Williams notes, ‘‘In the past, because I get quite bored of things really fast, I would usually write, produce and release within quite a short frame of time; otherwise, if I listen to it too much I’ll be afraid I won’t like it anymore. But I was able to work on Deep Routed for a much longer time, so I added to it and built it up over longer than I would have in the past.’’ 42 Williams responds gingerly when I ask if this change in their approach to writing is letting them take a step closer to their ideal musical identity: ‘‘I don’t really know what kind of sound I really want… I just do what I’m feeling in the moment, and I don’t think there’s anything I’m particularly striving for with my sound. My opinion, and what I like about my own music changes so much.’’ Their reluctance ‘‘to stick to one specific style or sound’’ is down to the constancy of their core influences – including indie auteur sweetheart soccer mommy, as well as the inimitable Fiona Apple – and their stylistic renewal, inspired both by their changing listening habits at home and their experiences sticking a limb out in the Irish circuit. ‘‘In the past few years I’ve made more friends in the music scene in Ireland in general, and I’ve definitely been inspired by going to festivals in summer, meeting different bands and artists and watching their sets. Like NewDad, I was listening to them a lot while making my new music. Sammy Copley too. And then obviously Pillow Queens.’’ That sense of stylistic renewal is also married with change on a personal level: ‘‘I change a lot, and often,’’ they add, with a note of self-surrender. As I bring up M(h)aol’s interview in the last issue of Totally Dublin, where lead singer Róisín Nic Ghearailt avows that their audience is ‘‘largely straight, white, male’’, despite their frank and subversively queer style, I wonder if Williams had a similar experience, or had the same yearning to engage an audience in a particular way. ‘‘I’m definitely writing more for myself,’’ they answer confidently, and unaffectedly. ‘‘I don’t think I have a specific type of person or audience that I’m trying to promote myself to or write for. Everything is my own experience and my own life, and I think it would be difficult to target that towards just one audience.’’ Williams is an artist indebted to the internet, at least for their following. It’s been five years since the teenage Ezra put Thinking of You on SoundCloud, where it’s since garnered 280,000 listens. An immensely endearing love song, with flatly delivered lyrics that any queer person could relate to, it possesses a sense of cuteness