In the three years since her last album, 2020’s Sorceress, Jess Williamson has lived a lot of life. She went through a heavy breakup, found herself single for the first time in nearly a decade, and began figuring herself out alone in Los Angeles. She reconnected with an old acquaintance in Marfa and struck up a new relationship; she now splits her time between the two towns. In the meantime, she was still making music collaborating with Katie Crutchfield under the moniker Plains, the duo releasing their album I Walked With You A Ways last year. But, also, she was writing songs that made sense of the whirlwind of change she was experiencing.
The result is Time Ain’t Accidental, a new collection that traces the whole arc of Williamson’s experience in the last few years: from the fault lines of a fracturing partnership, through to grief and loneliness, and then the misadventures and fateful meetings that led her to a new place, a new center. The songs here zoom in on
Last year, Jess Williamson teamed up with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and released an album under the name Plains. Today, she’s back with news of a new full-length of her own, the follow-up to 2020’s Sorceress. It’s called Time Ain’t Accidental, and Williamson recorded it with Brad Cook, who she’d previously worked with on Plains. Lead single “Hunter” is gliding and searching: “I want a mirror not a piece of glass/ We went a hundred down the highway,” Williamson sings on it. “I been known to move a little fast/ I’m a hunter for the real thing.”