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Victoria Williams_______________________
[--Atlantic--]_____ 
BY NATASHA STOVALL | In many ways, beyond just the similarity in name, Victoria Williams' new "Musings of a Creekdipper" is a sonic companion to Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," a meditation Dillard wrote in the early '70s on the natural world surrounding her home in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. It is a valley of muted colors, fertile summers and whited-out winters, and on her daily walks Dillard found herself drawn into a million tiny Shakespearean dramas, from the microscopic creep of tree roots to the hell-bent flooding of the creek. She realized, "Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it ... if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present ... Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio." Victoria Williams, a singer-songwriter who lives in the equally dramatic California high desert, very much believes in the running commentary of everyday life, and "Musings" is her personal radio broadcast. As on her last four records, she's chosen as subjects the personal and natural minutiae that surround her: newspapers, cows, rain, a boy who's allergic to everything, the way that trains don't have cabooses anymore. And with tender but unmistakable seriousness she makes these simple things as critical and life-shattering as any world news or broken love affair purports to be. On its face, '"Musings" appears to be somewhere between bluegrassy country and confessional rock 'n' roll. Williams' steel pedal guitar and banjo put her in the former camp, while her trilling piano and occasionally funky bass lines set her in the latter. In truth, Williams is all over the map, switchings genres so often -- from folk to jazz to spiritual soft rock -- the labels lose their meaning. The textures of Williams' songs get richer with each unforseen element and surprise turn. The mysterious and lovely "Kashmir's Corn" begins as a pensively plucked banjo lament -- "The other night I woke at 4 in the morning" -- but with the addition of bass, guitar and backing vocals, it becomes a far-out, mystical hymn, then returns, slowly, to the quiet of the plinking banjo. Williams' more traditional songs are wonderful as well: "Hummingbird," with its backyard beat and hoedown feel, is a shining example of her songcraft. Williams' weathered little gal voice is unpredictable as well, with a range that's capable of Sunday choir clarity on one end and Monday hangover snarls on the other -- if she was worried about sounding pretty, she wouldn't curl up into a sneers on "Train Song" or go off into some Godforsaken off-key space on "Rainmaker." But what makes Williams so brilliant is her utter commitment to telling her stories her way, no matter how, well, weird they sound sometimes. Like Annie Dillard, Williams can't help it if her world is rocked by the tales close to home -- of horses that kneel and hold court with rabbits, and eucalyptus trees that make her sleepy. It's her radio program, after all. She has to call 'em as she sees 'em.
Natasha Stovall is a regular contributor to Salon. |
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