Victoria Williams & The Loose Band – This Moment in Toronto

I first saw Victoria Williams about ten years ago playing with Peter Case and likened her voice to fingers scratching a blackboard. When I heard her songs for the first time sans voice on the Sweet Relief tribute, my first thought was, “What a pity that such beautiful, insightful, unique songs have been going to waste for so many years.”

About six months ago, I had the opportunity to sit three feet in front of Victoria Williams as she and a small band played her songs acoustically to a room of about fifty people. After that evening, I never wanted to have someone as a best friend as much as Victoria. What had bothered me most about her voice became what charmed me and drew me into her music. Squeaky became honesty, quivery became intimacy. You need the live experience to get it.

That said, This Moment In Toronto is a good greatest hits collection, but only a fair representation of her live show. There’s some engaging between-song banter, a nice bit with her dog Mollie, but even that seems to be downplayed and mixed rather low. I can only imagine her spontaneous, goofy smile and amusing interaction with her band.

Folks who still have trouble with Williams’ voice might find solace in her Loose Band. The instrumentation is beautiful, and much more sparse than her studio albums. The mandolin, fiddle, cello and piano are all excellent touches and make the songs more pure than the Van Dyke Parks-arranged strings and orchestration on her last album, Loose.

Almost half the songs here come from Loose but seem more immediate without the big production. Hearing Williams breathe life into her own versions of songs off Sweet Relief (a spry, upbeat version of “Frying Pan”; an abstruse “Crazy Mary”; a quiet, simple “Lights”) is especially a treat. Williams also performs other songs off her earlier albums, as well as a couple of standards (“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and “Imagination”), plus a new tune (“Graveyard”), making this a well-rounded collection.

This Moment In Toronto isn’t essential, and it’s probably not going to gain Victoria Williams any new fans. Only the actual live experience can do that. But if you’re a fan — if you appreciate a good band, simultaneously simple and complex storytelling and songwriting, if you’ve seen her live — This Moment In Toronto will bridge the gap until her next studio album.