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“Sometimes we surprise others by becoming someone we didn’t think we could be. A lot of the time we end up surprising ourselves.”
Maria Wilman has a history of doing the unexpected, of transforming in ways guided by a trust in her own potential and strength. It’s a trait that the London-based singer/songwriter explores with candidness and depth on her debut album 'Dark Horse', produced by Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Slow Club), featuring singles Full Circle, Roll Your Soul and Dark Horse..
Sparked by an offhand comment by a friend, ‘Dark Horse’ finds Wilman interrogating the idea of what it means for a side of us to appear as if from nowhere. What are we leaving behind there? What is the bereavement, the life already lived? What are the possibilities? Wilman knows the answers are hardly ever static. We never stop moving through our losses, even when the losses are pieces of ourselves.
There’s a lived-in quality to Wilman’s songs, born in ’69, which bristle with the kind of archetypal rock ‘n’ roll swagger that made The Pretenders so compelling and a dramatic flair and retro-pop edge that brings to mind the work of Nicole Atkins and A Girl Called Eddy. But Wilman is not rooted wholly in the past. There’s an urgency in her songs that begs the question, what’s next? And a further question: what is going to last?
“Sometimes we surprise others by becoming someone we didn’t think we could be. A lot of the time we end up surprising ourselves.”
Maria Wilman has a history of doing the unexpected, of transforming in ways guided by a trust in her own potential and strength. It’s a trait that the London-based singer/songwriter explores with candidness and depth on Dark Horse, a four-song EP produced by Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Slow Club) that offers a first taste of a much larger body of work written between 2019 and 2022.
Sparked by an offhand comment by a friend, ‘Dark Horse’ finds Wilman interrogating the idea of what it means for a side of us to appear as if from nowhere. What are we leaving behind there? What is the bereavement, the life already lived? What are the possibilities? Wilman knows the answers are hardly ever static. We never stop moving through our losses, even when the losses are pieces of ourselves.
There’s a lived-in quality to Wilman’s songs, born in ’69, which bristle with the kind of archetypal rock ‘n’ roll swagger that made The Pretenders so compelling and a dramatic flair and retro-pop edge that brings to mind the work of Nicole Atkins and A Girl Called Eddy. But Wilman is not rooted wholly in the past. There’s an urgency in her songs that begs the question, what’s next? And a further question: what is going to last?
Raised in the Basque country, Wilman grew up during the politically charged and controversial Franco years. Bilingual and bicultural from such a young age that she doesn’t even remember learning English, her life was immersed in what she calls “a British bubble” that would go on to shape so much of her life.
“It was very special to be a part of this parallel culture, in this close-knit community,” she says. “But between the two, I was more comfortable with my English side. It just made more sense to me, in how I wanted to express myself.”
A trip to London aged 16 was the clincher. “It was almost like landing on a different planet,” she says, thinking back on walking through the streets in awe. “It really shook my foundations. It had a feeling of everythingness. I remember thinking, I can be myself here. I can be beyond myself here.”
Five years later, Wilman packed up her car and crossed the channel for good. Having graduated in psychology, her first job was working on NHS hospital wards. “They were very intense years but I don’t regret them one single bit,” she says. “They made me who I am today, and it really helped me to understand the depth of human suffering but also human hope.”
Wilman didn’t always want to work in STEM. As a child, her imagination belonged to the arts. Theatre and ballet were her passions. As the oldest of four children, she would write scripts for her and her siblings to perform at home; But, as for many Gen X kids, her parents wanted her to get what they considered “a proper profession.”
“I fought it, to a certain degree,” she says. “I chose psychology because I felt like learning to understand how people think and feel would equip me well for later, for understanding the plot of a story, the motivations of a character.”
Wilman didn’t suppress her creative ambitions completely, always signing up for drama courses and other ways to keep the fire burning. But it wasn’t until recently that she realised a natural outlet had been staring her in the face the whole time: music.
Although she’d been playing guitar since age 11, she’d never taken it too seriously. That began to change in 2015 when she formed a short-lived covers band with some friends and started to play local shows around London. “There was a lot of frustration because I had to sing songs I didn’t necessarily like, and to sort of copy the original singers,” she says. “There was nothing about bringing your own interpretation to the music, and I wanted more.”
The lightning bolt hit in 2019, when Wilman turned 50. Entering a new decade created a sense of urgency. “It was always a matter of when I was going to make the jump,” she says. “I knew it wasn’t going to be never, but at the same time I felt that the train was already passing by and that I didn’t have much to lose.”
Energised by her decision, she hired some session musicians and played her own birthday party, just for her friends. Although she hadn’t written any of her own material at the time, that night sparked an explosion of ideas and by December that year she’d written and recorded a dozen songs. Enough for her first album. And she didn’t stop there. By September 2020, she’d finished her second.
“Although I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, I knew that what I was hearing on the album was not what I could hear in my head,” she says. “I’d had bigger aspirations for it, and I wanted to keep growing. But somehow I’d hit a wall.”
Seeking the advice of Stephen Budd, a veteran of the UK music industry, Wilman was directed to producer Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Slow Club) to try and maximise the potential of her work so far. “I was so fortunate that I could revisit those albums with Colin and his team, to understand them better,” she says excitedly. “You don’t often get a second chance to record an album, but this time the chemistry worked.
By the time re-recording of the first two albums had finished, Wilman found herself with enough new songs for album three. But rather than sit on them and potentially let her emotional connection to the songs fade, she went back to Sheffield and wrapped that one up as well.
If there’s a common thread between all these songs, it’s Wilman’s willingness to cross-examine the unknown – to draw out both its darkness and its joy. ’Mastermind’ asks if it’s all by design, while ‘Roll Your Soul’ revels in the ambiguity of avoidance, the ways in which we miss the mark on purpose. Intentions of another type are found on ‘Through Your Eyes’, which yearns for the end of self-condemnation. “Sometimes we see others with greater compassion than the one we grant ourselves,” explains Wilman, aware that it’s women who bear most of the harm.“
Once I was told, ‘There is no right or wrong in music.’ I love that idea, because there’s been a constant urge in me to run away as far as possible from labels, from being put into boxes and containers of right/wrong, good/bad, normal/abnormal. If we just embraced and accepted ourselves, as we do with music, we could just be. No judgements, no limits to our potential.”
In an ideal world, making a fresh start after 50 wouldn’t be remarkable. But we are where we are, and Wilman’s coming out as a musician is also her coming home. “I think I always knew, deep down, that I would end up returning to what I knew was true,” she says. “I knew I would end up aligning my life with my deepest intention, with where my heart has always been.”
“I think time is irrelevant in the process. It doesn’t matter whether you arrive when you’re in your 20s or your 50s, as long as you get there,” she says, and a playful smile crosses her face. “Maybe where I’m heading is not necessarily the end. The idea of a finish line is just what keeps us going.”