TL Ride-along #3: Trespassers William Look Back on 20 Years of 'Having'

'Having,' the third album from 2000s dream pop duo Trespassers William, is available on vinyl for the first time ever via Translation Loss.

“I don’t feel like I ever get very intentional about what albums are supposed to be,” reflects Trespassers William singer Anna-Lynne Williams on the making of the band’s third album, Having, following the success of their second record, Different Stars, four years prior.

She is in the room with guitarist and keyboardist Matt Brown, her main Trespassers collaborator and the band’s other consistent member, for the first time in many years.

“Different Stars was meant to just be Matt and I having a fun time,” she continues. “Having was just supposed to be us making another album. Maybe it should’ve been more business minded or intentional, but it was just ‘These are the songs I wrote,’ not, ‘The songs are me trying to do this or that.’”

When Different Stars took off, it saw major sync placements and attention from indie heavyweight Nettwerk Records, who signed Trespassers for a 2004 rerelease and a new album. At first, Having was just another album the band, then a quartet, wrote and recorded. Then, they took it to the label.

“We just had everything sounding like a slightly less glossy version of Different Stars, because Different Stars was in a big fancy studio that our friends had and we hired somebody to mix it and master it. This one, we were like ‘We’re going to do it for ourselves,’ but it was a little more stripped down. Plus, we’d all recorded ourselves. We’d leave the room and we’d each take our turns, whereas with Different Stars, we’re in a room full of guys pushing buttons. It was intimate, then the label felt like it didn’t have enough oomph.”

Trespassers William, 2005

Enter producer David Fridmann. Fridmann had recently worked with indie royalty like The Flaming Lips, Low and Sleater-Kinney, so he brought a distinct approach. Instead of leaning into the scaled-back vibe that Trespassers’ mix presented, Fridmann pressed for Williams’ vocals to sound unique from song to song and to bring forward other elements. The final product was something of a head scratcher for Nettwerk, who were expecting something much different from either product.

“There was some arguing,” Williams recalls. “They were cool and supportive—they never held up the record and said ‘You can’t put this one out.’ It was just different than they expected and [we] kind of quibbled about the track order and little things.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t just the label disoriented by the new sound. Trespassers William fans had come to expect a certain sound from the band, whether they had climbed aboard with debut album Anchor or caught the Different Stars wave.

“We put a sticker on the album to explain the sound of the record was intentional, which sounded ridiculous to us at the time but we did have a lot of fans who complained—’You guys need to take responsibility for the sound issues on your album’ or ‘There’s something wrong with mine,’ people trying to return them, which is why it never came out on vinyl before.”

Listening today, Having feels like a hidden gem. Opening with soft ambience and light chords that make way for Williams’ voice, it sets the tone for an album that is more personal and close to the chest than Different Stars. Even when Brown’s keyboards swell (“Matching Weight”) or when then-drummer Jamie Williams’ drums come to the forefront with their clanging, trip-hop-tinged production (“Ledge,” “What of Me,” “I Don’t Mind”), Having thrives in its subtlety. The members play to each other’s strengths, never letting things get too loud, too quiet or too busy.

“It’s a good third record, in retrospect,” Brown says. “It’s a sleeper for me and I think it’s a little harder to get to than the other ones, but it’s worth it. I think that’s what made it kind of interesting and unique in what we’ve done. I like how we were kind of pushing boundaries at that time.”

The unorthodoxy of Having clashed with what the label executives may have expected from the band, who had begun to reach a larger audience via releases, placements and touring. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Brown says the most important thing to Trespassers William was the music they wrote and loved.

“There were certain things we were willing to do and certain things we weren’t, or weren’t capable of,” he recalls. “Ultimately I think we just wanted to stand behind our record. Any time we ever fought as a band, it’s because we cared so much about it. There was definitely a lot it took to get this record out and we were happy with it, but everyone also felt like they compromised a bit.

“That’s why, for me, it was a really interesting experience to let go that much, to care that much, to work that hard. It was really kind of a crucible in a way at that time.”

Mixing with Fridmann

At the time, Brown and Williams had no sense that Having would be their last proper album. Trespassers William would go on to tour a bit more, eventually as just the Brown-Williams duo, and released an EP, The Natural Order of Things, in 2009. From there, Trespassers Williams slowly quieted down, before ending things on New Years Day of 2012. Their final B-sides and rarities compilation, Cast, came out later that year and was the band’s final music for nearly a decade.

“We were all big Radiohead fans at the moment,” Brown explains. “I felt like we were having our Kid A moment. We made our popular record and we were going to make our challenging-but-loved record and it was going to be the one after [Different Stars], continuing in the path of bands that I’ve admired and how their release arc goes.”

As of today, Having is on vinyl for the first time ever via Translation Loss. It’s been a long time coming for Trespassers William, who have only reunited one time, to release single “Winterstorms” in 2020. The renewed interest in their music has awakened a curiosity between Williams and Brown, who have spent the last 15 years on their own musical journeys with other bands and solo projects.

The music speaks for itself but Brown suggests wearing headphones, in order for Having to fully envelop you. You can find the album on vinyl here (shipping immediately!), and on streaming platforms everywhere.