Imogen and the Knife: soul-stirring ballads fueled by love and community spirit

Sometimes even the briefest step on the brakes can offer vital time to prepare for the road ahead. Imogen and the Knife knows this all too well. After becoming disillusioned with the repetitive grind of the music industry, the Newcastle-born, London-based artist decided at the start of 2022 to pause things for a while.

“It turns out that wasn’t very long,” Imogen Williams chuckles in a faint Geordie accent over a Zoom call with NME. “I’d lost a lot of love for music as a career, it wasn’t making me happy anymore,” she explains. “I took a break but it was so short-lived because I quickly realised I can’t exist without music.” Ultimately, it was the power of community that ended up sparking her vital new chapter.

“I began putting on my own live nights again and trying to reclaim what made me love performing in the first place. I started out just gigging in both London and Newcastle and forging a pathway again from there. It was a proper freedom of expression rather than just trying to shoehorn my art into the industry just to meet certain tick-boxes.”

That sense of freedom imbues her new EP ‘Some Kind Of Love’, which arrives this Friday (July 19). You only need to hear the breadth of its first few singles to know how adventurous this new direction is. ‘Mother Of God’ is a choppy, sultry bop drawing from the brooding grittiness of her icon PJ Harvey, while the tender piano-led ‘If It Won’t Talk Of Rain’ is an intimate, lovelorn ballad where Williams ponders: “If he takes me for dinner / can he wave my fee / I guess music is love and my loving is free.”

Such candid themes haven’t come for Williams totally out of the blue. Having originally established herself as a solo artist back in 2018, releasing piano-driven pop under her first name, she sees the era of ‘The Knife’ as more of a subtle reinvention. “It’s more of a continuation and a growth. I’ve always been writing like this, it’s just developed and taken on new forms.”

NME: So how did the concept of ‘The Knife’ come about and why change it up now?

“I’ve been playing my own music from the age of 15 so there’s definitely been lots of reinventions as I’ve gone through life. Everyone changes as they get older and it’s felt apt to do that with my music. After my brief break, I started putting on live nights back in 2022. I did a series called ‘Imogen And Friends’ in London and Newcastle which restored my faith in the fact that music is never going to leave me. At the same time I had all of these songs lying about, so it really spurred me on to set about making the record of my dreams.”

You can hear that creative liberation in the resulting EP. Did taking a break and coming back fresh remove certain external pressures?

“Yeah, the process was so free of any pressure, which was just perfect. I think you can hear that in the record as well. There’s a lot of care and love put into it. It was about pulling out all of the stops and having a brilliant time. I had a bit of an ego death as well where I let a lot of stuff go. I’m prepared to work for it, but it’s got to be on my terms and I don’t want to cut corners or make compromises to have that career. Maybe that’s what was getting me down before: I was taking advice from a lot of places in the industry and I felt like a deer in the headlights.”

“Love infiltrates absolutely everything I do”

Your music has always been deeply personal. What does ‘The Knife’ itself mean?

“‘The Knife’ is about reclaiming. I was born with hip dysplasia which meant that I had loads of corrective surgeries from a young age. That’s definitely one of the reasons why I make music and have always found solace in it. I’ve been living with chronic pain my whole life and being under the knife was a huge part of growing up. So it’s the reclaiming of that surgical knife, but I also wanted to allude to the fact that I have a band and it takes a village: it’s my producer, it’s the piano, it’s so much more than me.”

You’re massively proud of your Newcastle roots as an artist as well. How does that come through in the new direction?

“That part of me gets stronger the more I’m away from the north and Newcastle, but I feel really lucky to have that connection. Much like the Irish and Welsh, so many northerners are born into a culture of song. I think that’s so beautiful and it’s really important to me and it’s underpinned all of my writing. I understand that I’m a storyteller and that’s been passed down through my family. For me, it comes back to this culture of song and of community and of love, really. That’s the main thing for me and maybe that isn’t talked about enough. I spend so much of my time being so nurtured by my community up there.”

Love is of course a massive overarching theme of the EP. Did that present itself quite early on in this period of self-discovery?

“I refer to the EP as a patchwork of songs because they’re from quite a few different times in my life. I just cherry-picked the tracks that I love from across the last couple of years. When I put them together I found that they’re all exploring love in some way or another. It explores what love can be in all different capacities and I think that was a nice way to tie them all together. All of my songs are fuelled by love in some capacity. Love infiltrates absolutely everything I do.”

It’s more about your own journey, but your music does offer romance and escapism…

“I hope people can lose themselves in my music but also feel held by it. A big thing for me is inviting everybody in. I never want to feel too prescriptive at any point, I want to sing about experiences that are unique to me that people can put their own stories against. I’d love for my music to be a personal record for the listener and I think that’s really important in these times that people are seen and understood and held by the art that they’re consuming.”

You’ve cited everyone from PJ Harvey to CMAT to Lana Del Rey as inspirations. I guess the common thread is these powerful women who have always done it on their own terms?

“They’re all massively important to me. PJ Harvey has been a huge one, I channel her musically but more importantly the way she navigates her art and life. She managed to remain artful and mysterious and elusive while being really cool and brash. I love CMAT, her performance at the Big Weekend actually reduced me to tears. it made me realise I’d been so devoid of women just going for it. She sounded so beautiful while screaming like a siren and talking about the most devastating stuff ever through a lens of drag and comedy. It was the perfect show.”

Now you’re releasing music on your own terms and have had such a healthy reaction, does this EP feel like a game-changing moment for you?

“It definitely does. I feel deeply excited about prospects and things to come, it feels like new doors have been opened in ways I hadn’t ever envisaged. I’m a lot more hopeful and it’s lovely to feel like that because that’s maybe what I’d lost previously. I didn’t gain it back in the way that I thought I was going to, it’s taken on a different form which is really cool. I’ve been blown away by the peer recognition as well which is really important to me. I’ve had the chance to hang out with some of my favourite artists and producers just because they like the music.”

Imogen and the Knife’s ‘Some Kind Of Love’ is out July 19 via Vertex Music.

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