Victoria Williams – Water To Drink
Victoria Williams makes her presence known subtly but intently. On Water To Drink, she characteristically takes the simplest elements of music — the warm greens and soft pinks — and paints with them in the wind. Her pictures end up like laughing tales and wholesome loving from the highest point of the Ferris wheel to the depth of the softest, whitest sheet in a morning bed.
Water To Drink emphasizes her purity and lucid diction, and matches them with string and horn sections that weave like a parade down her acoustic city block. Since she’s decided to remake old standards, among them “Young At Heart” and the title track, and place them alongside her own compositions, the album’s tide is peculiar. Still, Williams frolics through the contrarieties and pulls it off by tying the tunes together with her beaming resonance.
On the remakes, she comes to life like a modern figure in full color against a black-and-white background, making the material presently relevant without sacrificing its antiquated style. Williams’ own songs, as always, rely on her playground-wisdom approach to writing lyrics. On “Joy Of Love”, she sings, “Cats will chase those mice around/Pick up the rusty nail from the ground/While you’re down there tie your shoe/You’re a big girl now, you got plenty to do.” In doing so, she peeks around the corner and drops off the truth.