‘Music makes you fall in love with people’: Marlon Williams on his ‘Māori disco bop’

The singer talks about moving home, his upbeat new sound, the euphoria of performing and putting out a ‘sunny New Zealand record’

It’s appropriate that Marlon Williams is chilling in a rocking chair when we talk. The only furniture more suited to his heady and breezy third solo album, My Boy, would be a hammock. The title track is a perfect indication: a good-times radio hit, or “Māori disco bop” as Williams puts it, set to guitar played in Māori strum style (also known as jingajik, jungajuka and dumdejak, from which you no doubt get the idea). It’s a welcome salve after a few stagnant years, in which he – like most musicians – could not tour his last release. What’s more, it feels like a huge-hearted album.

“That makes me very happy,” Williams says, when I say so. “I wanted it to be concerned and loving, and keep the arms of the record open. I can’t help but write dark songs most of the time, so I set up the world around me to make sure I kept it upbeat.”

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