"I got stuck between a novelist and an actress," he says. "The novelist started telling me how one of my songs helped her write two chapters of her latest book about grim reapers, and the actress was telling me how she just discovered me on Twitter that morning and she saw me in a pharmacy two hours later, just after I arrived in the country, and was very blown away at the coincidence of it."

For this Lyttelton – via Melbourne – boy, it was a little bit of an overwhelming first night in America, the land of noise, chatter and ego, something Williams is noticeably lacking in. His "crippling self-effaceivness" is a particularly Kiwi quality he says, meaning he bucks the trend in overly confident LA.

Do they "get" him over there?

"Oh, probably not," Williams muses, "but I don't think that matters too much. They're pretty good at finding their own reasons to enjoy something. It's a very self-affirmed place, LA. If they like something then they'll find a way to tell you about it and show you."

The 12 songs on his beautifully dark, brooding, country-infused self-titled album have struck a nerve not only in his adopted country of Australia, but through the States and Europe as well, and as a result, he has barely stopped touring the world this year. Which, for a self-confessed homebody, has its challenges.

"I just talk to people at home a lot and just focus on what I'm doing. I don't do a lot of sightseeing, not that I have time to anyway, but it's pretty much my scope is a shower, a bed, a gig and very little besides."

He's looking forward to finally heading back to Australia, which, he says for him on a worldwide scale now feels like home. "Relatively speaking to where I am right now, it's going to be a relief. New Zealand is still always home, but it's home-r than New York is!"

Williams was born in the port of Lyttelton, New Zealand, where he grew up singing in church choirs and subsequently forged a pretty successful teenage music career in the alt-country band, Unfaithful Ways, which supported Justin Townes Earle and Band of Horses.

By the age of 21, he says, he was feeling restless. "We had the earthquakes in Christchurch and a lot of my friends had moved to Melbourne after the that. So I decided that I'd do the same, and had an offer for management if I moved to Melbourne so it just sort of happened that way."

At the beginning of the year, he released his debut single, Dark Child, and in April his debut solo album was received with universal critical and public acclaim. It's something he's still getting used to. "Just putting ideas down to committed, recorded history and memory is a scary thing in itself. But for then someone to go out and push that as a representation of yourself, it's quite a full-on experience.

"It's certainly a hard thing to prepare yourself for, but it's all the while the exact thing that you are preparing yourself for, I guess, if you're honest with yourself. It's still surprising when it happens."

Marlon Williams and The Yarra Benders

When: Wednesday November 25, 8pm

Where: Transit Bar

Tickets: $23.50 from moshtix.com.au