Woodpecker Wooliams (No 1,345)

Hi ho, hi ho, into the dark we go – with a singer who sounds like a homicidal Disney heroine, singing songs of violence and desire
Woodpecker Wooliams
Apian adventurer … Woodpecker Wooliams PR

Hometown: Brighton.

The lineup: Gemma Williams (vocals, instruments).

The background: Why Woodpecker Wooliams? Because Gemma Williams, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (harp, kora, omnichord, keyboard, harmonium, electric organ, accordion, penny whistle, clarinet, bells, glockenspiel, electric shruti box, recorder and drums, since you asked) bobs her head a lot, and when she was living in an 800-year-old cottage under Totnes Castle one winter she wore loads of woolly jumpers. No prizes for guessing that, as female performers go, she is more Bjork than Beyoncé.

Talking of Bs, she collects them – bees. "I spent 30 minutes in the backseat of a car on a beautiful starlit night," she said of a recent apian adventure, "hugging my new beehive to my chest. I'd spent the day with powertools making it. I had my ear to the pine and I listened to them humming and telling me their stories as we travelled. It was heavenly."

She's also into birds, and has written and recorded an album in their honour. The Bird School of Being Human features seven songs, all titled after birds. "Each song came via a bird that had a story to tell," she says. "A bit like a reverse Disney animation – rather than anthropomorphising animal characters, these songs are kind of how it might be like if people were aviomorphised, or if the birds were in human bodies. Bird's eye views … the bird's songs, really."

Not that Williams/Wooliams is some airy-fairy dreamer. Eccentric, perhaps. But she's lived a life that's full. She grew up in Crawley, "an incredibly serious" child prone to "manic hysteria and hyperactivity". She was struck down with a "mystery illness" and spent most of her young life either flitting in and out of consciousness, having fits or suffering migraines. She discovered a love of singing but couldn't really play music at home because her mum had a rare condition causing an intolerance to repetitive or high-pitched sounds. All of which may explain why, when she was 20, she became a practicing shaman and had something called "an overnight earth burial". Or not. She also trained as a maternity nurse and midwife.

Wooliams/Williams brings her experiences to bear on The Bird School. It's no cute-fest. Yes, she has a high, hiccupy voice that is as creepy ickle gurl as it's possible to get without it sounding like something from an 18-certificate Disney movie about a homicidal Snow White. And that voice is more often than not draped in the sort of harp glissandos and pretty fantasia that make Mummers resemble Metallica. But there are all manner of electronic textures and droney effects to balance out the sweetness, and the lyrics – however saccharine they may seem – address "passivity and violence, female hysteria and male aggression".

On the opening track, Crow, she sings about building "a great funeral pyre" as the music becomes increasingly clanging and industrial. Dove cries out to be described as "bewitching", but by Gull she is bemoaning her "wretched life". Hummingbird is as solemn as a hymn, with a cacophonous climax. Magpie features acoustic guitar over weird electro noise that could well be a swarm of her beloved bees. Wooliams coos: "Oh my bonny, bonny boy". Did we say creepy?

Sparrow is the single, and starts with a looped drone of a beat and fuzzy guitar. But Red Kite is the one where the pretty and the piercing are most powerfully juxtaposed. She sounds like a fair maiden from a bygone century, yet she's singing about seeing a photo of her ex-boyfriend on Facebook. And she's not very happy about it ("You were wearing the very same thing I've been wearing since our last night when you smashed my face in"). She goes on to say she still dreams about him almost every night, sometimes with "his fingers around her throat". At which point you think: should we leave? But there's more. "What really got me the most was that, darling, I thought you were good." Cue free jazz/noise-out ending and a haunting feeling you may find hard to shake.

The buzz: "Strange, elusive, and haunting" – theirbatedbreath.

The truth: Creepy, but in a good way.

Most likely to: Give new meaning to "the birds and the bees".

Least likely to: Provide a particularly suitable soundtrack to sex.

What to buy: The Bird School of Being Human and Sparrow are both released by Robot Elephant next week.

File next to: Joanna Newsom, Bjork, Mummers, Hall of Mirrors.

Links: woodpeckerwooliams.bandcamp.com.

Friday's new band: Oddience.