Search - Victoria Williams :: Swing the Statue

Look at that Moon, Inspirator of Many a Tune...

Charles Curtis | Jackman, Maine | 10/25/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I bought this album thru Amazon sometime within this last year.



I remember reading the reviews here, and thinking that the negative reviewers sounded like people who didn't like their conventions played with, and had had them seriously tweaked by this album. The positive reviews, especially the one that references Julie Miller & Co. really grabbed my attention, and the little voice in my head said to give it a chance. So I dropped it into my cart.



It arrived, I loaded it into my iTunes rotation of roughly 27k songs, and forgot about it.



I have so much music in my mix, and I'm always adding new stuff, so frequently tunes I've never heard pop out and charm me. I like it that way. It keeps me on my toes. Anyway, this last half year these odd cheerful lunatic carnival merry-go-round hillbilly hurdy-gurdy Alice went to wonderland through a rabbit hole somewhere down on the bayou piano and accordion inflected tunes kept popping up on occasion, where this obviously touched woman sang with a beautiful quirky voice and unique phrasing. Every time they popped up, I would mark the moment thinking, 'dang, what the heck is that?' For a few months they kept popping, and for some inexplicable reason I never checked.



Finally I realized 'Why Look at the Moon,' was Victoria, and thought, well this one song justifies having purchased this album. Then I gradually made the connection between that loony song and all the rest. It then dawned on me: this album is a minor work of genius.



'Boogie man,' 'Holy Spirit,' 'Vieux Amis' - and 'On Time!' What a hoot of a song! It's that Alabama tune 'I'm in a hurry to get things done' or Toby Keith's song about his list of things to do reinterpreted by a bohemian Cajun mystic. With an organ. She is a better philosopher and theologian than those guys, too. The lyrics are good. Every single time I hear it any crap tarnishing my heart is just seared away, and my soul starts to bob free- Every time this girl comes around on my mix, a piercing shaft of gladness creases my day.



Just recently, about a month ago, I pulled the bulk of this album into my special road mix. I listen to it daily now, along side the likes of Emmylou, Julie Miller, Kasey Chambers, John Prine, and Iris DeMent. Victoria belongs in that company. In some ways she's better than any of them. She's quirkier than even Prine, and her voice and phrasing is unusual - like an Appalachian cabaret songstress, a 19th century fused with postmodern alt sensibility. It's just nutty and marvelous. I'm addicted to it.



Interestingly, one of the only songs I don't like on this album is 'I Can't Cry Hard Enough..' To each their own, I suppose."