A.A.Williams - As The Moon Rests (2LP) - Black/White Vinyl

As The Moon Rests arrives as the bold second act from A.A. Williams, released in October 2022 on Bella Union, and it lands with the patience and gravity of a tide coming in. Williams carved out a space with Forever Blue and the stark covers collection Songs From Isolation, but this one feels like the moment the lights go out and the room seems bigger than you remembered. She is a classically trained musician, and you can hear that in the way she guides songs with piano and cello as much as with guitar, letting harmonies bloom slowly until they tower.

The first thing that hits is the scale. Guitars grind and surge, drums move like a heartbeat you can lean into, and there is air for her voice to rise. She never shouts to be heard. She floats just above the clang and rumble, steady and clear, which pulls your ear closer. The production favors tall arrangements and cavernous reverb, though nothing gets smeared into mush. You can pick out the piano notes when they enter, that low cello line that makes everything feel heavier, the ghostly vocal stacks that shadow her lead. It is heavy music shaped with the care of chamber music.

“Evaporate” is a perfect entry point. It opens like a candle being lit in a dark room, then widens into a storm. The chorus cracks open without losing control, and the way the guitars drag their feet behind her voice feels purposeful, like resistance she is pushing through. “The Echo” pivots from a fragile verse to a riff that feels carved out of granite, then back again to a hush that could be a confession. The title track, “As The Moon Rests,” is the album’s thesis, a long, slow ache that keeps finding new corners of light inside the gloom. None of these songs rush. They build, they wait, and when the wave finally hits, it feels earned.

Williams has a knack for writing lines that read like vows, then delivering them with a steadiness that makes you believe her. The themes circle grief, endurance, the kind of love that bruises and still holds on. There is a lot of grayscale on the surface, yet small details keep flashing. A piano figure waltzes in and changes the room temperature. A cello enters an octave lower than you expect and pulls the song downward in the best way. On headphones, those details become anchors, and the album starts to feel less like a set of tracks and more like a single narrative that breathes and contracts.

If you have followed her path through the post rock and dark folk edges of the UK scene, the connective tissue makes sense. She has worked alongside artists from that world, including a collaboration with MONO, and she fits neatly next to names like Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle while sounding like herself. What sets her apart is the classical poise. Even when the guitars are grinding, there is an elegance to her phrasing and to how the arrangements turn. It keeps the songs from collapsing into murk. You get weight and you get line, the steel and the silk.

For those eyeing the As The Moon Rests vinyl, this is the kind of record that seems built for a turntable session. The slow climbs, the dynamic swells, the roomier production, they all bloom when the needle drops and the speakers have space to breathe. Bella Union’s catalog sits nicely on a shelf, and A.A. Williams albums on vinyl tend to reward that late night listen where side A becomes side B without you realizing you flipped it. If you like to buy A.A. Williams records online, keep this one in your cart before it vanishes again, because it is the album people recommend to friends who think they do not like heavy music. And if you are crate digging for vinyl records Australia shops have a knack for stocking, this title is one of those spine-tingling finds.

It is easy to hear why this record clicked with fans. The songs land in that rare place where volume becomes intimacy. You feel close to the singer even when the amps are roaring, and you leave with melodies that keep circling back a week later. As The Moon Rests sits comfortably among the best dark rock of the past few years, and it proves A.A. Williams can write with both scale and soul. If you were waiting for the moment to jump in, this is it. And if you are already on board, the A.A. Williams vinyl edition will make the room shake in the gentlest way.