Unlike many L.A. transplants, singer-songwriter Chelsea Williams didn’t arrive as a starry-eyed dreamer seeking a catapult toward fame. It would have been a little soon for that anyway, considering she got there before she’d even started walking and talking.

With a vocal-coach mother and that Joni Mitchell-inspired name, it’s hardly surprising that Williams embraced music early on. By 12, she was writing songs and hitting open-mic nights. At 14, she joined a band of blues players closer in age to the grandfather she never knew. She drew inspiration from that grandfather’s sacrifice of his musical aspirations to raise his five daughters. At 21, she started busking at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. After watching her solo mom struggle to raise two daughters (even selling her guitar to buy them Christmas gifts one year), Williams’ LaLa Land desire was simply to make a living playing her dreamy-sounding pop for attentive — and hopefully generous — listeners. 


On ‘Beautiful and Strange’, which follows 2017’s Boomerang, Williams and her producer (and husband), Ross Garren, somehow strike a wire-walker’s balance between the seemingly opposing forces of childlike whimsy and mature sophistication. The former manifests as toy pianos, singing saws and a general lightness of being that floats like a breeze throughout these 11 tracks. The latter permeates their sweeping, deeply-layered arrangements, as well as Williams’ engaging style, whether she’s dissecting relationship dynamics or examining the very notion of destiny.

 “I guess if I had to define my style, it would be sort of Americana with a bit of modern pop, topped off by a healthy dose of reckless abandon,” Williams says. “I never want to confine myself creatively, and I apply these categories very loosely.