Victoria Williams

Happy Come Home (Geffen, 1987) is a work produced by and heavily influenced by the personality of VanDyke Parks, who crafted the 1960s-oriented arrangements. Her high, shrill, wavering, childlike voice was quite unique, and nonetheless displayed traits of blues, gospel and jazz. The old-fashioned minuet Shoes features her most acrobatic tremolo, contrasted by the exotic and dejected litany Statue Of A Bum where she is almost colloquial. That flexible voice makes for an effective narrative vehicle, as visible in TC where she runs the gamut from chirping to almost spoken, while Parks adds romantic strings in the vein of old Broadway musicals. Parks complements her almost wild performance in Animal Wild with Indian instruments and marching strings. The martial and country-ish vignette Big Fish is embellished by Ralph Carney's jazzy saxophone solo. Frying Pan launches into a breezy, comic and rocking shuffle. The bluesy I'll Do His Will has a choral gospel-ish refrain that echoes Joe Cocker's soul-infected version of With a Little Help from my Friends, while Merry Go Round, the prettiest melody, is stately and piano-driven the way Warren Zevon used to do it. There is an excess of strings in the dreamy ballad Main Road, which sounds like a preview of the future star Bjork. The ensemble features notable musicians such as Steve Swallow on bass, David VanTieghem on percussion, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, Carla Bley on piano, Jody Harris and T-Bone Burnett on guitar, Bobby Previte on drums Anton Fier provides arrangements for several songs and Peter Blegvad is one of the many backing vocalists.

On the second album, Swing The Statue (Rough Trade, 1990), Williams finds a balance between folk concision (the spare elegy On Time with only guitar), the grandeur of gospel (Holy Spirit with more than a touch of Bob Dylan-esque pathos), world-music (the limping Caribbean rigmarole Boogieman), the domesticated country shuffle (Why Look At The Moon), vintage musichall (Wobbling), orchestral balladry (the mournful I Can't Cry Hard Enough), and stately anthem (the social fresco Summer Of Drugs). Her voice is less warbly, relatively "normalized". The album is de facto a collaboration with producer Michael Blair (who plays drums, Chinese drums, marimba, cowbell, vibraphone, glockenspiel, accordion, organ pedals, washboard, checkerbox and tambourine) and features Willie Aron on guitars and organ, Don Falzone on basses, Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar Steven Soles on mandolin and trombone, Byron Berline on fiddle and mandolin John Philip Shenale on Hammond organ, David Williams on piano, etc.

In 1992 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Loose (Mammoth, 1994) instead reprises the baroque arrangements of the first album, but weds them to a far more personal and sometimes depressed mood (in the songs obsessed with death such as Harry Went To Heaven and Century Plant. There are echoes of Joni Mitchell (Hitchhiker's Smile, with sitar and flute), Randy Newman (the gracefully old-fashioned Polish Those Shoes), Donovan (the delicate folk lullaby My Ally), Van Morrison (Love) Tom Petty (Crazy Mary), and even Dolly Parton (the country elegy When We Sing Together). She switches effortlessly from mocking comic marching bands (Happy To Have Known Pappy) to intoning solemn soul ballads (the horns-laced You R Loved), from the poppy ditties of the 1960s (Sunshine Country, but with a great violin solo and a crunchy guitar break) to elegant jazz balladry (Waterfall). Her vocals shine in the soul pomp of Get Away. Her singing has become gentler, an evocative jazz-tinged register. The album benefits from the collaboration of an impressive number of famous friends: guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills of R.E.M., vocalist Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum, Mark Olson of the Jayhawks, drummer Don Heffington of Lone Justice, violinist Richard Greene, Lili Haydn on viola, Van Dyke Parks himself on accordion, the Tower of Power horn section, Rami Jaffee on organ, Tim Ray on piano, Tammy Rogers on violin, Geri Stuyak on cello, Doug Weisselman on clarinet, bass harmonica and clay flute, Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar, mandolin, acoustic guitar and dulcimer, and so on. The cover of Randy California's Nature's Way and Don Heffington's Psalms (a sort of Amazing Grace) feel out of context.

Musings Of A Creekdipper (Atlantic, 1998), produced by Trina Shoemaker, marks a departure from the orchestral and sophisticated arrangements. This time, the orchestration (cello, dulcimer, flute, clarinet, vibraphone, banjo, trumpet, etc) is used to recreate a somewhat rustic setting. Accompanied by musicians like the Calexico duo, Williams shows more interest in the ambience. Hence the surreal void of Nature Boy, the anemic noir jazz of Allergic Boy and the ghostly melancholy of Tree Song (Eucalyptus Lullabye). Her eclectic songwriting aims for more experimental textures. At the same time, she embraces a philosophical tone in Periwinkle Sky while indulging in the catchy melody of the swinging Train Song (The Demise Of The Caboose). Every now and then a primordial mood surfaces, notably in Hummingbird, which sounds like a cover of Donovan's Catch the Wind. The morbid horror elegy Blackbirds Rise is another leg in her personal journey to the otherworld, and Grandpa In The Corn Patch (a blend of marching bands, spoken-word poetry and Broadway musicals) works as a sort of a preamble to the whole series.

Water To Drink (Atlantic, 2000) mainly proves that Victoria Williams has listened to Bjork and the Portishead. Water To Drink and a few covers of jazz standards update her style with trip-hop innuendos.