Some guitarists are inspired by the brawn of AC/DC or the delicacy of Joni Mitchell, but neo-folk fingerpicker Yasmin Williams had a very different way in. “I played Guitar Hero II every day after school when I was 12, until I beat all the levels,” she says, with no small amount of pride. Within weeks, she’d become a Nirvana and Hendrix devotee and had the game licked – even the ridiculous avalanche of notes that is Thunderhorse by fictional thrashers Dethklok (“a deep cut: very hard, very fun,” she adds.)
Today, at home in Alexandria, Virginia, she is not only surrounded by guitars, but also bookshelves in the shape of guitars. Williams is now making some of the most purely beautiful guitar music anywhere, and describes new album Acadia as “a blossoming, of sorts” – it opens with solo acoustic instrumentals in the vein of her spellbinding first two albums, but the arrangements open up until Williams is accompanied by electric guitars, synthesisers, alto saxophone and singing voices. “It’s maybe not what people will be expecting from me,” she says. “But those elements have always been within me. I love jazz. I love rock music. I love electric guitar.”
