William Alexander on his new album, Along the Boundary Line
From the Central West of New South Wales, William Alexander [https://www.williamalexandermusic.com/] won his first Golden Guitar earlier this year in the category of Bush Ballad of the Year, for the song ‘Wild Roan Brumby’, which he wrote with his good friend Pete Denahy. For those of us who have observed Alexander’s career, and listened to his releases starting in 2023, there was no surprise in the award itself – only in the fact that it had taken so long. For three years may not seem like much, but when the talent is as evident as it is in this artist, it feels like more than enough for recognition to mature.
In the songs on his latest album, Along the Boundary Line, Alexander has a way of writing about life and work on the land that suggests someone who not only observes and feels and thinks but can articulate the result of all of that. He’s alert to the world, in other words, and curious about it too. Not that he’s always recorded his own songs: he began by releasing cover versions.
‘I just always felt like I hadn’t earned the right to be the songwriter yet,’ he tells me in this new interview. ‘I was too busy discovering old songs and absorbing that.’
In Along the Boundary Line Alexander creates songs in a traditional style that cover aspects of modern life, marrying a way of life that is much older with contemporary concerns. It’s almost a juxtaposition, until you realise he’s likely documenting his own experiences. As an example: ‘All I Stand to Lose’, which was a single, is about the push and pull of having the urge to go roaming yet cherishing what’s at home, and is the acme of bittersweetness. Yet Alexander doesn’t linger there, instead moving onto the jaunty ‘Horse and Hobble Days’, and both songs are alive with detail.
Alexander is also a wonderful singer, both recorded and live, a balladeer who is also a crooner. When I ask him about his voice in our recent chat, he says, ‘I think what you're mentioning is probably just the way I was told to speak as a kid.’ He had, he says, a grandfather who insisted on no mumbling, and it’s ‘coming through in the way I sing’.
Along the Boundary Line was recorded largely with just Alexander and producer Lindsay Waddington in the room first, building each song before adding esteemed players including Brendan Radford, Jen Mize and Michel Rose. The result is a collection of songs that immediately allow the listener in and invite them back. Although there’s a distinct lack of yodelling – something that featured on his first album, The Singing Stockman – which I ask him about.
They haunt you, these new songs, in the way that they put you in the landscape with its space and silence and also its sounds and the life that’s humming all around you yet not always evident to the eye. That’s achieved through the production, sure, but it all starts with the artist’s intention – with the stories he has to tell and the way he wants to tell them.
The album is an outstanding work. It was a pleasure to talk to Alexander about those songs, and much more.
Buy Along the Boundary Line on Bandcamp [https://williamalexander1.bandcamp.com/]
Listen to Along the Boundary Line on Apple Music [https://music.apple.com/au/album/along-the-boundary-line/1882285095?itscg=30200&itsct=music_box_link&ls=1&app=music&mttnsubad=1882285095&at=1001lryz]
Listen to Along the Boundary Line on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/album/2OzOwzHy6m7oXUiJNvL6vL?si=1HmugVSxRhGRFEOV0w9cHg]
Listen to Along the Boundary Line on YouTube [https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mW7IKgQVF-Dv95web81duYuTYxeKdw0Ks&si=6uq7yr0bmFtAVtgL]
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