EVAN WILLIAMS – RIDE ON – SINGLE REVIEW

“With drums that trot like a cowboy’s trusty steed before sharp guitars come clanging in and oscillate in volume between verses and choruses, it’s Evan Williams and Ride On”

Evan Williams is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Thanet, Kent, who will be releasing his debut album, The View From Halfway Down, on 11th April 2025, via Peter Doherty’s Strap Originals label. In anticipation of the album’s release, Williams has released his latest single, Ride On, which will be the third track on the album.

To put it into context just how highly regarded Williams is, his debut single from 2021, When The Shutters Rise Again, was described by GigSlutz as “a soulful, stunning debut.” A year later he released the intimate and pensive I’ll Stick Around which was chosen by Matt Wilkinson (Apple Music) as one of his hidden gems of 2022. Since, Williams has gone on to support Peter Doherty, The Libertines and Hak Baker and his 2023 track, The Arsonist, featured on NBA 2K24.

The initial idea for Ride On came to Williams in dream. It is a compelling listen as its tempo and structure is rooted in Country & Western, but it has a dirty rock, almost swampy, tonality. Picture Marty Robbins outside a bar in a stand-off with Drenge.

Speaking about Ride on Williams has said,

“I heard fragments of this song in a dream after a particularly heavy night. In the dream it was the theme for the opening sequence of an old western movie starring Ice-Cube. I woke up humming this melody and the phrase, ‘He was out there in the city eating Western takeaways’ going round my head. I got out of bed and wrote the rest of the track in a few minutes.”

Ride On begins with drums that trot like a cowboy’s trusty steed before sharp guitars come clanging in and oscillate in volume between verses and choruses. For the verses Williams’ voice takes centre stage as he tells of a murdered guitarist, an unemployed woman abandoned by her partner, squabbling drug fiends and a regretful father. His voice has a rich maturity beyond his years.

When Williams opens up for the repeated choruses in which Ride On is repeated maniacally, I’m reminded of Jacob Slater (Wunderhorse) in the way that he simultaneously competes with and compliments the instruments around him. He uses his voice to steer the track in the way he wants it to go.

The music video for Ride On, directed by Barnaby Fairley, features two versions of Williams. One is sat by an old television set and the other is on the TV. The TV version of Williams is in part cowboy dress up driving around in a Sinclair C5, one of the first electric vehicles to become commercially available, which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. The TV footage is grainy, sometimes in black and white and sometimes in colour and both evoke classic western films.

Evan Williams’ debut album The View From Halfway Down will be released 11th April 2025 and was recorded in three sessions at The Albion Rooms, Margate, with Jason Stafford.

Williams has said, “The View From Halfway Down is a coming of age record. It’s a documentation of my stumbling first steps into adulthood and ponderings on the future. It’s about how it feels to make a life for yourself in a crumbling industry and an increasingly uncertain future.”

WATCH THE OFFICIAL VIDEO TO ‘RIDE ON’ HERE NOW