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New York Observer
Manhattan Music

Williams' Delight, Chesnutt's Merriment

Wrapping her waif-like voice around objects of found delight, riffing off the Beatles and channeling the yelping spirit of Macy Gray, critics' darling Victoria Williams delicately tries to dip her toes into the pool of mainstream acceptance on Water to Drink (Atlantic). It's not going to work. Ms. Williams is too full of unabashed wonder and rich with uncontrolled glee to be wedged into any kind of package that'll be played in Manhattan restaurants as incessantly as Gray's On How Life Is has been for the past year. Regardless of the pop wrapping paper, Ms. Williams' freakishly childish voice will always be too much for most of the world to take.

Those who are receptive will find Ms. Williams as full and as rich as ever on Water to Drink. Like Patty Griffin, she is unafraid to sing earnestly about mundane subjects. Indeed, much of this album is about discovering joy in overlooked artifacts. Take "Grandma's Hat Pin," or "Junk," for that matter, with its scronchy electric guitar and swamp-funk keyboard lines and this motto: "One man's junk is another man's project / Fixing up junk is a lifelong process / With carefully placed trash is / Someone's teary handkerchief." Don't get it yet? Then listen to her spoken-word introduction to "Lagnapippe" (pronounced "lagniappe"): It's a Creole-derived word that connotes "a little something extra that someone is not expecting, maybe not even deserving."

If lines like that seem a little cloying at first blush, Ms. Williams has the ultimate trump card: She's suffering from multiple sclerosis and knows more than most about taking pleasure from wherever it comes.

Of course, there's always the question of whether Ms. Williams' music would be as appealing if the listener weren't aware of her affliction. On Water to Drink, the answer is yes. Ms. Williams' Betty Boop shtick can be a bit much at times, such as on the overbearingly cute "Claude," but a handful of songs here are as good as anything that's come out this year. "Light the Lamp," with a single-pedal steel guitar line running through its core and its wink to The White Album's "Cry Baby Cry," is pure delight.

Where Ms. Williams is all sugary delight, Vic Chesnutt wraps himself in Gothic horror stories and ominous undertones. Like Ms. Williams, Mr. Chesnutt came to public attention in part because of a personal tragedy: The Athens, Ga., singer-songwriter was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. But Mr. Chesnutt, whose concerts are often drunken, rambling affairs, is no blissed-out survivor. On Merriment (Backburner), he growls about idiots, cancer and "shooting oneself in the foot / Catching one's self with a fishing hook." And that's all on the title track.

Mr. Chesnutt continues his habit of collaborating with like-minded Southern oddballs here. On 1998's The Salesman and Bernadette, Mr. Chesnutt's best album to date, it was the Nashville 12-piece retro soul outfit Lambchop. On Merriment, it's Kelly Keneipp -- a confidante of Athens, Ga., indie-savant Jack Logan -- and his wife, Nikki Keneipp. Save for a couple of guest turns, including punk stalwart Curtiss Pernice on backup vocals and Mr. Logan on bass, it's just this sparse trio picking away on a spare album: With 10 songs, the whole effort weighs in at under 35 minutes.

Mr. Chesnutt operates like Williams' darkly obsessed cousin. For every piece of beautiful junk on Water to Drink, Mr. Chesnutt counters with some dark nonsense on his own album. Merriment plays like a roiling, drunken horror story, during which Mr. Chesnutt scraps with his genetic destiny ("DNA") and delineates a circus replete with herpes-infected clowns, worm-addled dancing bears, a crack-smoking emcee and a human cannonball who's blown his brains out ("Mighty Monkey"). Where Ms. Williams has soaring trumpet lines and swelling string combos, Mr. Chesnutt uses a drunken-sounding piano dirge, a bowed electric guitar and a funereal clarinet.

Ms. Williams' album is being released on Atlantic records, and it has the full force of the company's P.R. machine behind it. The promos are delivered with a hefty packet of press clippings and full-color photocopies. Mr. Chesnutt's album, released on Messrs. Keneipp and Logan's pet label, Backburner, comes with a single typed-up bio sheet. Naturally, Ms. Williams will get the ink -- she's already been written up in Spin and profiled in Interview this month -- and Mr. Chesnutt will be relegated to a handful of critics' year-end lists. That's a shame. Behind The Music life stories aside, both are artists worth savoring.