Dar Williams Noodles Her Way Through Emerald

The Good: Decent lyrics, Great voice, Moments of musical diversity
The Bad: Short, Unsurprising vocals, Musically un-catchy
The Basics: Dar Williams's latest album, Emerald might be better than most music being churned out today, but it stands as one of her less remarkable albums.


It is rare that I am anywhere near the cutting edge of new music, but thanks to some of my favorite artists popping up with projects on Pledgemusic.com, I'm getting better at having new reviews of genuinely new music. To wit, those of us who supported Dar Williams's new album, Emerald, on Pledgemusic have received it (at least in digital form) in advance of its release next week to the general public. So, I've been listening to Emerald on high rotation for a couple of days and I had the title of my review ready since the first listen!

But as I've listened to Emerald over and over again, I was not actually sure what my opinion of it was (other than noting that it did not have a single memorable tune - melody). I realized my opinion when, while looking for lyrics for my review, I was thrilled to see that Dar Williams is performing this very night only three and a half hours away from where I live. My wife gave me permission to go and I was about to buy tickets when she said, "Maybe she'll be doing some of her new stuff!" Before I could form a conscious thought, I found myself declining the opportunity to see Williams in concert again (I've seen her twice now and had a great time both times!). So, Emerald . . . maybe not Dar Williams's best album ever and hardly a sale's pitch for encouraging fans to come out for her new tour.

With only eleven tracks clocking out at forty-three minutes, Emerald is a short Dar Williams album. (Presumably, I won't know for certain until the physical copy with the proper credits arrives next week) Emerald is the creative vision of Dar Williams. She has a tendency to write her own material (though she co-wrote at least one track onEmerald) and play an instrument on each track. Williams is occasionally accompanied on songs on Emerald - "Slippery Slope" is a duet with Jim Lauderdale and she has backing with other female vocalists on "FM Radio" - but the primary vocals are very clearly from Dar Williams. As Williams is now in complete control of her music career, it would be surprising if she were not involved with the engineering and production of Emerald.

The music of Dar Williams is often about statement, but it is hard for fans of hers not to be able to easily pick out one of her tunes; I frequently find myself humming "Flinty Kind Of Woman," "As Cool A I Am" or "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono." I still get chills every time I hear the opening chords of "The Great Unknown." There are no songs quite so memorable on Emerald. While "FM Radio" is an up-beat, satirical pop number, the rest of the songs are entirely unmemorable on the music front. For sure, I know (rationally) that Dar Williams composed music to go with these songs, but "Something To Get Through" and "Empty Plane" sound like Williams's song "The Hudson." "Slippery Slope" features two guitars playing and I am sure the artists are not just randomly strumming or plicking the strings, but after eight listens to this album, I know if I heard "Slippery Slope" without the vocals out in the store, I'd have absolutely no clue what song it was. Williams has a number of great songs that do not have strong melodies ("Mortal City" comes instantly to mind); Emerald is packed with them, though. The songs that sound like they have a tune to them sound derivative - "Here Tonight" is on now and I know it sounds like three other up-beat Dar Williams songs. Musically, Emerald is an unimpressive album, though Dar Williams takes some musical risks by filling out the sound on songs like "Here Tonight" and "FM Radio" with additional production elements or instruments.

Vocally, Emerald is undeniably Dar Williams. Williams sings comfortably within her established vocal range, clearly and energetically throughout most of the album. She emotes well on the sadder, slower, songs like "Empty Plane" and "Girl Of The World." That said, none of the vocals are in any way pushing the range of the artist or the expectations of the listener. Williams sounds good on Emerald, but there's no spark or satire there. Having seen Williams in concert a few times, she has wit and enthusiasm and on Emerald her vocals are straightforward and adequate, but not interesting. (The best analogy I can give is in acting; she gets through the lines with an adequate amount of emotional representation for the lyrics, but she never makes the lines her own or infuse them with anything unexpected or remarkable.)

Lyrically, Dar Williams is as clever and as interesting as ever, which at least makes Emerald listenable. Deeply political as always, she sings about the nature of aging and economy on "Mad River" and activism on "Girl Of The World." Dar Williams opens Emerald strong with the powerfully personal song "Something To Get Through." Anyone who has ever struggled through personal adversity can easily relate to the lines "Wake up and you still feel the same / It's hard to move when you're reeling from the pain" ("Something To Get Through"). "Weight Of The World" is similarly impressive for Williams's simple, direct insight on the human condition set to music. Fans of wonderful music will appreciate that Dar Williams can write and she brings her talent in full on Emerald.

As one who shelled out in advance for the work, part of me felt some pressure to rate Emerald high, but the objective reviewer in me just could not allow that. Emerald is a decidedly average album from one of the superlative American singer-songwriters of our age. It's hard not to be disappointed when an amazing artist puts out something that is average, but Emerald ends up there and leaves one hoping that with her next album, Dar Williams will return to wowing us.

The best track is "Something To Get Through," the low point is "Here Tonight" (I like the lyrics to "New York Is A Harbor" less, but damned if Dar Williams doesn't know how to end an album well, musically!).

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
End Of The Summer
Cry Cry Cry (as a member of Cry Cry Cry)
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
My Better Self
Live At Bearsville Theater
Promised Land
Many Great Companions
In The Time Of Gods

4.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Horrors Of Endings, The Rising Of Greatness: Dar Williams' End Of The Summer

The Good: Great sound, Wonderful lyrics, Decent voice, Good mix on album
The Bad: Two weak tracks, Short
The Basics: With exceptional lyrics and a greater range of instruments - bass, more drums, production elements - Dar Williams steps up with an album that pushes the envelope.


When I first discovered Hem (in my life, not like I was a talent scout and "found" them or anything like that!) and reviewed Eveningland (reviewed here!), I was told that I might be placing too much emphasis on musical genre as opposed to simply evaluating the music as I heard it. In short, I was too concerned with whether or not Hem's unique sound, which mixes folk, rock, pop and classic country, was too close to country for my comfort. While I might not belabor that point if I were to write a review now - how many of our reviews would we change after we've had a year or three with a work?! - it was something that was a concern at the time and I wrote it as I felt it. I mention this because reviewers of Dar Williams's third album, End Of The Summer often berate the album for how it is more pop-rock than folk and when I discovered I had not written a review for this work, I decided to champion Dar Williams and End Of The Summer as an argument for the growth of an artist.

With eleven tracks, clocking in at just over forty-three minutes, folk-rock artist Dar Williams explodes the preconceptions of what a folk rock album can be by taking lyrics with the sophistication and storytelling associated with folk music writing and pairing them with pop-rock instrumentations and production levels. The result is either a redefinition and progression of folk-rock or one of the most lyrically-sophisticated pop albums of all time. Either way, End Of The Summer is pushing the envelope both of genres and the musical abilities of artist Dar Williams.

To start with, Dar Williams is a singer-songwriter who sings with a glorious alto voice and she has the ability to articulate fast, full lines of music while still singing and expressing emotions. So, for example, on "Teenagers, Kick Our Butts," she melodically declares, ". . .Some felt afraid and undefended, so they got mean / And they pretended what they knew made them belong more than you" to a straight out rock and roll beat.

Williams is a genuine artist and she wrote ten of the eleven tracks ("Better Things" was by Ray Davies) on End Of The Summer. She sings and plays guitar on all of the songs and End Of The Summer is very much her musical vision. As a result, it's hard for her core audience to complain that she has created something that is not Dar.

That is not to say that this album is not different from The Honesty Room. Indeed, when End Of The Summer opens with the booming tympany sound and heavy bass, it's clear that this is not a quiet, introverted folk album. Instead, Dar opens big with "Are You Out There" which is a pop-rock sounding song about independent radio stations. It's a cry for the preservation of private radio stations that broadcast the conspiracy theorists and underground musical artists and the true originals who are still struggling to be heard. It's a brilliant piece and it instantly sets a rigorous pace and high quality standard for the songs that follow. But it does sound like a pop-rock track as Dar Williams cries out, "Are you out there, can you hear this, / Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis / I was out her listening all the time, / And though the static walls surround me / You were out there, and you found me, / I was out here listening all the time" (“Are You Out There?”). Would that most Top 40 songs were written so well!

Williams does not disappoint, though, continuing the storytelling nature of her lyrics with "Party Generation" (about aging and mentoring the next generation of slackers), "The End Of The Summer" (about going back to school and facing expectations), and "My Friends" (about the need to have others in one's life), even as the guitars, drum, and bass abandon the more familiar and acoustic sound from Williams's earlier works.

And Dar Williams continues to innovate in her writing, as she sings about going to therapy ("What Do You Hear In These Sounds?"), the expectations placed on the next generation ("Teenagers, Kick Our Butts"), and the horrors of nuclear proliferation. Williams does what few serious artists can do by writing with irony and humor when she wants. She has many funny lines, like "I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak / I go and I find the one and only answer every week" ("What Do You Hear In These Sounds"). She balances such humor with the seriousness of social messages, like the cry to stop spending so much on warfare; ". . . we're heading for a nasty business, / Keeps our country growing, / Where the weapons that we're selling / Are the only seeds we're sowing . . ." ("Bought And Sold").

This is the mark of a true original and the less successful moments on the album are when she abandons her originality and when she fails to provide the listener with more. This is a short album; I would have liked more from this talented artist. And her cover of "Better Things" ends the album with a less impressive track than had she finished with one of her own, more lyrically, vocally or musically powerful songs. "It's A War In There" would have ended the album with a real sense of emptiness, which would have flowed very well back into the beginning.

Fans of folk music who are open to listening to an artist who wants to push the envelope will enjoy the lyrical and musical sophistication of Dar Williams and on End Of The Summer, she does not sacrifice her voice. Her vocals are not produced over, keeping her spirit and talents intact and evident. Anyone who likes pop-rock music will find this to be an accessible and intelligent alternative to the drivel currently populating most Top 40 airwaves today.

The best track is "Are You Out There" (which I once listened to twenty times back to back and still love it, it's so extraordinary!) and the weak points are "My Friends" and "Better Things." The rest of this album is solid and of a quality that is hard to debate.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
Cry Cry Cry (as a member of Cry Cry Cry)
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
My Better Self
Live At Bearsville Theater
Promised Land
Many Great Companions
In The Time Of Gods

8/10

Check out how this album stacks up against all of the others I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best (work) to worst!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Indistinct Dar: In The Time Of Gods Is Annoyingly Forgettable Dar Williams.

The Good: Decent lyrics, Clear vocals
The Bad: Short, Songs blend together, Musically derivative.
The Basics: In The Time Of Gods is Dar Williams’ latest album and a surprisingly unmemorable outing from the smart, political, writer-musician.


There are few artists I truly get excited about. When I discovered that Dar Williams had a new album out that I had not heard of in advance, I got excited and picked it right up. I’ve been listening to it for the past month and it has taken me that long to muster up the effort to write about it. In The Time Of Gods is the least distinct, least interesting – thematically and aurally – Dar Williams album to date.

At this point in my reviewing, it behooves me to mention that many of the albums that I have labeled “indistinct” are not bad, per se. Instead, they are just utterly unmemorable. When, for example, I listen to In The Time Of Gods, it is not an unpleasant experience. There are even songs I enjoy and have lyrics that I think are smart as they play. But, when the album is not on, it is virtually impossible for me to recall anything that is on In The Time Of Gods. It is derivative, auditory mush, but it is good in the abstract. Ultimately, the lack anything that is truly interesting, audacious, or lyrically memorable, makes In The Time Of Gods a tough c.d. to recommend, though it is not unpleasant to have on.

With only ten tracks, clocking out at 33:20, In The Time Of Gods is very the work of Dar Williams. Williams wrote all of the songs on the album and she provides all of the lead vocals. In addition, she plays acoustic guitar on nine of the ten tracks. While she is not credited as a producer in any way on In The Time Of Gods, she is at a place in her career, on a label that supports her, that it is ridiculous to think she would release something that was not what she intended for it to be.

Vocally, Dar Williams is as good as ever. She performs with decent range, from alto to soprano and what makes her vocal performances distinctive is how clearly she sings each and every line. Williams is an artist who has something to say and she makes certain the listener may hear her. That works out nicely. In the whole realm of being indistinct, though, she presents her songs the same way. There are no long notes held, there are no extreme scales. Instead, Dar Williams sings at a sensible pace on every song, clearly enunciating every note and every word, song after song, without real variation.

Instrumentally, In The Time Of Gods is similarly monotonous or derivative. One of the more creative – for Dar Williams – tracks is “The Light And The Sea,” but that song opens sounding remarkably like “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees. Similarly, late in the album, Williams’s guitar openings sound virtually identical to the openings to many of her other, prior songs. The result is that In The Time Of Gods sounds familiar and lacking in real originality throughout.

In a similar vein, In The Time Of Gods is an unfortunately repetitive album lyrically. Opening with “I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything,” it seems initially like Dar Williams is off to a good start as a musical storyteller. When she sings “Oh, what have we here, he must be three or four / Checking out of the booth on his way back to war / And he’s not looking for a father or a mother / Just a seven year old brother / On this match line border camp of refugees . . . So where are we now, he must be five or six / Just running around, hungry kids, sharpen sticks / And he will grow with pain, and fear, and jealousy / Taking in by school of zealotry / Who trained orphans to make orphans evermore” (“I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything”), she seems to be providing a poignant, politically-relevant song about the fate of youth in Africa or other places where child soldiers are utilized. But, she dilutes the smart, well-written narrative lines with painfully monotonous repetitions of the title. “I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything” comes up ten times, with several near uses of that line.

Conversely, she writes magic on “Crystal Creek.” That story, of civil rights and rebellion, is well-presented with lines like “The one who spied me out as God still plunder / Had to show the world that he was not a true hunter / And it was me when he saw me naked / He was interrupting something sacred / I was guarding Crystal Creek” (“Crystal Creek”). It is a rare thing that one can write a decent historical song, but Dar Williams does it.

But, largely, In The Time Of Gods is poetic without distinction. “Storm King,” which closes the album, is simplistic, but not horrible. Even though “The storm king has seen us from above / Rising up on the starboard bow / He knows the turning of the years / I am the storm king now” (“Storm King”) is better than most writing compared to songs on the radio today, it is less wonderful relative to other Dar Williams songs.

Ultimately, In The Time Of Gods leaves me without the ability to pick a best or worst track. The short album is the least distinctive of Dar Williams’s works and quite possibly the only one not worth picking up.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
Cry Cry Cry (as a member of Cry Cry Cry)
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
My Better Self
Live At Bearsville Theater
Promised Land
Many Great Companions

5/10

For other music reviews, check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dar Williams Dances Near Perfection With My Better Self

The Good: Excellent music, Phenomenal lyrics, Great voice, Holds up over MANY listens
The Bad: "Liar"
The Basics: Dar Williams's My Better Self is a brilliant collection of personal expression and political activism with a few impressive covers thrown in.


I do not use the words "perfect album" lightly. For that matter, I don't use the phrase "perfect film" or "perfect book" lightly either. I try to be as stingy with 10/10 (and 0/10) ratings as possible, so regular readers of my review understand when I do that the product truly is extraordinary (in either direction). Dar Williams' outing, My Better Self, falls a whisper shy of being a perfect album. It's so close, though.

Before I start gushing about this album I have listened to forty (LITERALLY) times in the last month, let me tell you why it's not a perfect album. "Liar." Track 11, sandwiched between the amazingly allegorical "Beautiful Enemy" and the simple elegance of "You Rise And Meet The Day," is not awful, but it is not the caliber of the other tracks and it distracts from the listening experience.

"Liar" is a socially-conscious song about a young person from the wrong side of the tracks who attends a school full of rich kids and basically passes as one of them. It's a good message, that those who are different should not be discriminated against just because they are not affluent. While Ms. Williams has a great talent for lyrics and has a strong grasp on the sentiment she is conveying here, the title (and thus the refrain) of "liar" just does not carry the message or impact that the discrimination implies. In simpler terms "liar" is the wrong word here. The refrain is catchy, yes, I have walked down the street humming "liar . . . li-ar" over and over again, but it is incongruent with the rest of the song. Or perhaps it is that it takes the language of the discriminators and thus does not allow the protagonist of the song her own identity in anything near objective terms that is troubling. Either way, this song does not work as . . .well, perfectly, as the rest of the album.

Dar Williams is an amazing poet and she basically has a voice that is filled with irony one moment, sadness the next, and poignancy in the next. Her messages range from political observation ("Empire") to the sadness of breakups ("So Close To My Heart") to the anger that comes from breaking up ("Beautiful Enemy") to the longing of love ("I'll Miss You Till I Meet You"). There is nothing she cannot cover. And, to turn a phrase, My Better Self includes two covers that are staggeringly brilliant interpretations of Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."

My Better Self is an expression of a master of the craft of making music. Unlike 99.5% of what is played on the radio, Dar Williams has something to say and she has the ability to say what she wants clearly and in a way that is entertaining. Believe me, I don't listen to a c.d. forty times in a month if the work is not wonderful. Dar Williams has a daring spirit that often gets her classified as "folk," though My Better Self certainly goes well beyond what is traditionally thought of as folk by mainstream America. This album has a range and depth to it that is far beyond most artists.

In the folk tradition, My Better Self does include a fiery political charge with "Empire." Undeniably an assault on the Bush Administration, "Empire" charts the decay of a political regime with observations that individuals and institutions help create (and ultimately destroy) the corrupt machinations of a junta. Williams brilliantly opens with the most direct possible charge she can when making a timeless anthem, "Who's afraid of the sun? / Who would question the wisdom of the mighty?" Williams is fearless in her attack on the Bush Administration and laments the loss of America like no one else musically is doing these days.

And there is something subversive about following "Empire" with a cover of "Comfortably Numb," which Ani DiFranco joins Dar on. It is worth mentioning that My Better Self is easily the best use of guest performers on an album I have heard in Dar Williams repertoire, if not in recent memory for all albums. One ought to know one of my pet peeves is musical albums that rely on guest performers. When I buy a Dar Williams album, I want to hear Dar Williams. This trend is especially problematic in rap albums where many rappers will have other artists appear on tracks, in an attempt to cross-capitalize on the popularity of other artists. Usually, the extra performers add nothing, usually serving to distract from the individuals talent as a solo artist. On some of Dar's previous albums, I've been bothered by the guest vocals supporting her when she didn't seem to need it (spoiled me, hearing several of her songs live and on her own, before hearing them on the album). On My Better Self, the supporting vocals are excellent and not overbearing. Marshall Crenshaw on "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" adds to the performance. And Ani DiFranco's role on "Comfortably Numb" is so subtle I wondered how Dar Williams was able to get her to take such a supporting role.

More than a political album, My Better Self is a complex collections of songs about self, often infused with longing. Containing one of the best breakup songs ever, "Beautiful Enemy" is a brilliant track that explores the effects of a disunion in a cloak of international relations. It is clever and there is nothing like it on the radio.

The best track, though is the second. "I'll Miss You Till I Meet You" is sad and meaningful and full of hope and wonder. It is clever and it's too bad most radio stations will never play it.

An important note for those unfamiliar with the works of Dar Williams. My Better Self opens with an ironic assault on youth religion movements, entitled "Teen For God." If one does not enter the album understanding - or appreciating - irony, it can be a terrifying experience. No, Dar Williams is not a Christian rocker. The album bookends wonderfully with ironic "Teen For God" opening and closing with the very genuine, purity of "The Hudson."

Who will like this album? Anyone who likes quality music with brilliant, emotive lyrics. Who won't? I don't know them. Sorry. Any artist who can sing the word "hegemony" is worth your time, attention and money. And it forces me to revisit the question I asked on one of my earliest Dar Williams reviews: How is it Dar Williams is not huge?!

The best track is "I'll Miss You Till I Meet You" which is subtle and slow (a VERY close second is "Beautiful Enemy" which is raucous and energetic) and the weak point is "Liar," which robs My Better Self of perfection. But, for most, this is close enough.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
Cry Cry Cry (as a member of Cry Cry Cry)
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
Live At Bearsville Theater
Promised Land
Many Great Companions

9.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2005 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Swag For Fans, Not Great For Casual Viewers, Live At Bearsville Theater Flops.

The Good: Great music by Dar Williams, Some moments of stories
The Bad: Visually unexciting, Musically an uninspired selection, Cost for value
The Basics: Dar Williams makes a pretty lazy DVD release with virtually the same concert she made a live album out of before. Disappointing, especially for fans.


Right off the bat, I am a BIG fan of singer-songwriter Dar Williams. I love her music, she is one of only four musical artists I will buy ANYTHING by when they release something new without having heard any part of it. I have such faith in Dar Williams that I will purchase her works blind and I've never felt like I have been cheated in doing that . . . until now.

Back in April, I went to a concert - it turns out the day before Dar Williams celebrated her birthday - and when I made it over to Lake Placid, I discovered that I had left the item I was hoping to get Williams to autograph at home. Dar Williams is famous for meeting with fans after her shows and signing things. So, I picked up her Live At Bearsville Theater from the table of swag they had for sale. Williams did not sign (I'm beginning to think it's me as this was her second concert I went to and I've yet to meet her!) and I left Live At Bearsville Theater on my shelf until last night when I finally got around to watching it.

The short of it is that I'm disappointed. Moreover, I feel I've got a pretty decent right to be disappointed (at the concert, of course, it was not a cheap internet price!); as a fan when one of the artist whose work I love produces something new, I want to get something new. Live At Bearsville Theater is a concert DVD. Over the course of 75 minutes, Dar Williams presents a concert at Woodstock where she spends thirty-five minutes as a lone woman and her guitar playing songs that made her famous like "When I Was A Boy," "The Ocean," "February" and "Iowa." Then, she provides a voice-over about the difference in performances between being a solo artist and having accompaniment at which time, she is joined by three men who provide back up for her on "As Cool As I Am," "Are You Out There," "The Easy Way" and "After All," among others.

One suspects that Dar Williams was having a little fun with being backed by three men and using "As Cool As I Am" as the first song they did together. There's something ironic and cute and outright funny about having Dar Williams with an all-male backup singing "I will not be afraid of women" ("As Cool As I Am") repeatedly. Williams has a sense of humor and one doubts that such things were lost on her.

The concert, it is worth noting, is good. Live At Bearsville Theater presents Dar Williams in a good light, moving between her singing on stage and reactions from audience members (though sometimes the transitions happen at very awkward moments). Williams has an amazing singing voice and those who do not know the works of Dar Williams would get a fair appreciation of her range and repertoire on this DVD, whatwith the presence of some of her most beloved songs like "The Babysitter's Here," "The Christians And The Pagans," "If I Wrote You" and "Mercy Of The Fallen." Williams also does a cover of the Greatful Dead's "Ripple" and it fits her wonderfully.

But the problem with Live At Bearsville Theater - other than failing to capture the energy of crowd or the concert, including at one point Williams making a joke and the crowd either not laughing or having the laughter edited out - is that it is entirely predictable and average and expected Dar Williams. Up until two months ago, the novelty of the DVD was that it had one of Williams's forthcoming songs, "The Easy Way," but now that Promised Land is out, one need not get this just to get the new song. The only track, then, unique to this album is "Ripple," though some of the songs - to be fair - are not available in live renditions.

But that's where the DVD becomes problematic and begins to slip for me. First, for all of my love of Dar Williams as a musical artist, singer-songwriter and performer, she is a one-woman act and from what I've seen, most of them a remarkably similar. Williams is a crowd pleaser for fans in that she performs the songs that fans seem to love the most while mixing in a few new ones each concert. But between the two concerts, this DVD and her live album Out There Live, Williams is not a great live performer as far as diversity goes. All four shows have been essentially the same.

Largely, it is Out There Live that kills Live At Bearsville Theater. Out There Live is an album that has Dar Williams performing sixteen songs live. Live At Bearsville Theater has Williams performing sixteen songs, of which eleven of them are songs she performed on Out There Live. Of the five new live renditions, "The One Who Knows," "Mercy Of The Fallen" and "The Beauty Of The Rain" were all from The Beauty Of The Rain, which was almost an acoustic album, so despite my love of the songs and hearing them live, there's not an intense difference between the live versions and the album cuts.

But that brings us back to the overall concept of the concert DVD. Dar Williams is not providing a seminal concert experience for her career or for music in general with Live At Bearsville Theater. But for a DVD, Williams is not providing anything visually interesting. Don't get me wrong, Dar Williams is wonderful to look at, but her concert experience is not - for example - a work of unique performance art that changes with each outing like an Alice Cooper concert. Williams is not doing pyrotechnics or a U2-esque visual pomposity behind her or even something big. This is an intimate concert with Dar Williams (largely) providing the same songs she's already performed live for the listener. And she stands there behind her microphone flapping her leg while playing her guitar and . . .

. . . that's it; I'm not going to disparage one of my favorite musical artists. But Live At Bearsville Theater would have made for an average, maybe a little better, c.d. but it's only worthwhile to fans of Dar Williams who will never get to a concert and who do not have Out There Live. It's not a great use of the medium and Williams may have electricity at her performances (she does!) but it is not captured in this DVD.

On DVD, Live At Bearsville Theater includes three bonus features. There are two music videos, "As Cool As I Am" and "What Do You Hear In These Sounds?" They both are basically Dar Williams singing to camera, though "As Cool As I Am" mixes it up by playing out part of the storysong on screen. There is also a short collection of shots of people setting up for Williams's concert, including pictures of her adjusting her microphone height. In other words, these DVD bonus features are not going to light the world on fire for those on the fence about this DVD.

See Dar Williams in concert, pick up Out There Live, but unless you will never do either of those things, there's no good reason to pick up the DVD of Live At Bearsville Theater.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
Cry Cry Cry (as a member of Cry Cry Cry)
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
Promised Land
Many Great Companions

3/10

For other video reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Cover Dar: Cry Cry Cry Is Dar Williams Plus And It's All Right!

The Good: Decent mix of songs, well presented. Interesting concept, Lyrics, Some decent renditions.
The Bad: Could always use more Dar. . .
The Basics: I find myself taking a much more lukewarm stand on Cry Cry Cry than other reviewers as Dar Williams teams up with others for a folk cover album.


I suppose one of the ironies of finishing off my little R.E.M. kick and then moving on to a "new" artist is that the first one I chose to review post-R.E.M. is an artist/group that opens their album with an R.E.M. cover song! As a fan of Dar Williams, I was pretty much obligated to pick up a copy of Cry Cry Cry, the eponymous c.d. by the one-disc group that called itself Cry Cry Cry. The reason for this, for those who are not fans of Dar Williams, is that Dar Williams is ostensibly the big draw for the trio of Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell. Given that Dar Williams is the only one of the three I had heard of before picking up the disc, she certainly was the draw for me.

Cry Cry Cry is a folk-rock album presented by the band which is made up of the folk-rockers and it is a very standard folk-rock album with songs that tell musical stories. Rather baffling to me, as a fan of Dar Williams - who has a pretty amazing repertoire -, is that none of the songs on the album are written by Dar Williams (Richard Shindell wrote the final track on the album). As a result, it is not exactly a necessary album for Dar Williams fans.

With twelve tracks, clocking in at 49:55, Cry Cry Cry is a collection of cover songs that were all previously recorded by other artists on other albums from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s. Given that the only one I knew ahead of time was "Fall On Me," it is unclear how many are folk-rock reinterpretations of rock and roll songs and how many are pretty pure covers of the originals. Yes, the most famous artist covered is R.E.M., so after the first track there is a good chance it will be new to you, as well.

All of the songs are arranged by Cry Cry Cry and while the trio provides primary and harmony vocals, they provide only minimal instrumentals. Richard plays guitar on three tracks and Dar plays none, which is strange because she is a very able guitarist (I've seen it with my own eyes!). As far as the vocals go, the duties of primary vocals are spread pretty evenly among the trio, with Dar taking lead on four songs, Lucy getting primary on three, Dar and Lucy harmonizing as the main vocals on two tracks and Richard picking up the other four. All are quite up to the task.

Because I have often complained in my reviews of Dar Williams' albums that she doesn't need male accompaniment, it is worthwhile to have me note that Williams, Kaplansky and Shindell harmonize exceptionally well. On songs like "Shades Of Gray," Shindell's voice adds an air of realism and reasonable narration for the storytelling that sells the song. He sings the song of joining a little band of delinquents and his male voice makes the song work (somehow women stealing cows and running from the law just seems ridiculous to me, whereas a man doing it just makes me roll my eyes at the plausible stupidity of such a scheme). Moreover, when he provides supporting vocals with Lucy on tracks like "Fall On Me" and backs up Lucy alone on "Speaking With The Angel," it works and the sound is smooth, mellow and intriguing.

On her own, Lucy Kaplansky does not impress me that much on Cry Cry Cry. Does she have a good voice? For sure. Her range on "Speaking With The Angel" is impressive and she goes with an apparent effortless quality from the alto into the soprano range. She harmonizes beautifully with Dar williams on "The Kid;" their voices gel amazingly well, making it impossible to judge individual vocal performances on that track. And On "By Way Of Sorrow," Kaplansky illustrates that she can articulate at an up-tempo pace and she is good.

Ironically, it is Dar Williams who might give the least regular vocal performance on Cry Cry Cry. Williams is clear and precise on "Fall On Me," achieving what R.E.M. never did with that song; a clear vocal performance (yea!). Under Williams' arrangement and vocals, the song can be clearly understood and it works surprisingly well as a light folk-rock track. But on "Lord I Have Made You A Place In My Heart," I was ready to criticize how twangy Kaplansky was until I discovered to my dismay that the lead vocals I was not enjoying were actually Dar Williams'. In fact, outside of harmonizing with Kaplansky - which she does equally well on the hauntingly stark "I Know What Kind Of Love This Is" - the only other Dar Williams-driven track that illustrates any ability on her part is the final track of the album, "The Ballad Of Mary Magdalen." And in truth, Williams makes that song her own.

"The Ballad Of Mary Magdalen" was written by Richard Shindell and after hearing the Cry Cry Cry version of it, I have no desire to hear him sing it. Despite my great flexibility over gender issues and gender identification issues, when Dar Williams sings lines like, "My name is Mary Magdalen, I come from Palestine / Please excuse these rags I'm in, I've fallen on hard times / Long ago I had my work when I was in my prime / But [I] gave it up, and all for love / It was his career or mine / Jesus loved me, this I know, but why on earth did I ever let him go" ("The Ballad Of Mary Magdalen") she makes them resonate and she has a voice so close to the divine that we might believe it is actually Mary singing it. Just like the Melissa Etheridge cover of "Refugee" (on her Greatest Hits album) infuses added meaning to the well-known lines simply by virtue of the singer being a woman, Williams singing with the voice and perspective of Mary Magdalen makes it resonate with a truth that is greater than what one might expect were a man doing it.

In general, Cry Cry Cry chose a good mix of well-written songs to showcase their vocal talents with. The songs range from the purely emotive ("By Way Of Sorrow") to the pretty classic folk concept of the story set to music with songs like "Cold Missouri Waters" and "Memphis." Interestingly, Shindell seems to take the most direct musical stories. Perhaps the most complex and original of these is the second track, "Cold Missouri Waters." "Cold Missouri Waters" tells the story of firefighters who get trapped in a blaze and it's a decent story-song with lines like, ". . . I'd seen bigger / So I ordered them to side hill, we'd fight it from below / We'd have our backs to the river, / We'd have it licked by morning, even if we took is slow / But the fire crowned, jumped the valley just ahead . . . Too big to fight it, we'd have to fight the slope instead . . ." And it's a rare thing when a song can tell a story that is so different, make it musical and make it so intriguing as to be worth coming back to time and again, but Shindell sings James Keelaghan's lines in a way that does all of that. It's one of many well-written songs on Cry Cry Cry.

Perhaps the exception to this is "Down By The Water." The song has a honky tonk Country sound to it and the lyrics utilize disappointingly predictable rhymes. So when Kaplansky sings "Down by the water where the big dam is standing / I met Corrinna last night / And while the pale moon was sinking, we lay there drinking . . . Down by the water, I thought I knew / Down by the water, quick as the dew . . ." ("Down By The Water") the track takes on a more singsong quality than anything substantive and meaningful. In other words, the musical story is simple and the language makes it overly simple to the point that it just seems like silly little ditty. This is unfortunate, especially when stacked up against the beautiful poetics of songs like "I Know What Kind Of Love This Is."

Instrumentally, Cry Cry Cry is a very simple album with minimal percussion. The primary instrument on every track is a guitar, be it plain or acoustic. There is bass on a few tracks, and one mixes it up with cellos, but for the most part, this is a very simple guitar-driven album. It evokes the concept of quiet coffee houses and that aura of singing and performing. That is fine, but there are moments that one suspect some of the songs could be a bit more. The only one that actually breaks out to its full potential in terms of sound is "The Ballad Of Mary Magdalen." "Fall On Me" resonates vocally, but in their effort to make it lyrically comprehensible with their amazing vocals, Cry Cry Cry underplays the instrumentals.

Ultimately, this is a good, but not great album. Dar Williams fans will want to give it a few spins and I recommend it for the diversity, but truth be told, I'm probably not keeping mine in my permanent collection. The album is too erratic for my tastes and given that there are tracks that Dar performs the primary vocals for that didn't grab me all that much, I figure it's a good one to rip the three or four tracks I loved from before passing it on to someone who will appreciate it more. But for those who like pure folk and a decent range of songs in that genre, there is probably enough here to satisfy listeners.

The best track is "The Ballad Of Mary Magdalen," the low point is the twangy "Lord I Have Made You A Place In My Heart."

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
Promised Land
Many Great Companions

5.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my index page with an organized listing of all the music I have reviewed!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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For All My Love Of Dar Williams, Promised Land Is A Repetitive And Average Album.

The Good: A few very catchy, well-written tunes, Vocals, Theme, Production
The Bad: Terribly repetitive lines, Musically unimaginative, Short
The Basics: A very average Dar Williams album, Promised Land presents new Dar Williams songs that sound much like what she has released before.


Dar Williams is coming to a nearby city this very weekend and I am so tempted to go to her concert in Buffalo, but odds are I simply won't have the money to go. Part of the reason for the lack of funds has to be that I just shelled out real money for a real compact disc, Dar Williams' last original album Promised Land, which I learned was out while checking out the Hot 100 albums list right after it was released (yea Dar!). I knew she was coming out with an album, but I have been so busy with moving and getting my life in order, that I didn't realize the album was coming out until I saw it had made the list.

I had a little advantage coming into Promised Land; I attended a Dar Williams concert in the Spring and she performed three new songs which wound up on the album. And as I delve into evaluating her latest work, it is important to note that Promised Land is good and it is still better than the majority of music that is Out There on the radio. But ultimately, Promised Land is average and it sounds like a natural extension of her prior album, My Better Self, without any real sense of growth since that album.

With only twelve tracks, clocking in at 41:53, Promised Land is a more collaborative album from Dar Williams than many of her others. Of the twelve songs, Williams only wrote seven on her own, which is a bit of a departure for the singer-songwriter. Two of the others are covers - Fountains Of Wayne's "Troubled Times" and Stephen Trask's "Midnight Radio" - and three are co-written. "Book Of Love," which was performed at the concert I attended, was co-written by pianist Lara Meyerrattken, who opened for Williams and had the most amazing contraption to allow her to accompany herself in rounds while on stage. "Book Of Love," "Buzzer," and "The Business Of Things" were all songs I had heard before listening to "Promised Land."

Promised Land has less original writing exclusively by Dar Williams than most (possibly all) of her other albums. As well, there is a pretty significant array of instrumental performances from people other than Williams. For example, Lara Meyerrattken is credited with all of the keyboard credits and Suzanne Vega appears to provide background vocals. Strangely, Dar Williams is not credited with any instrumentals on the album, nor is she given any form of production credit. As a result, one might question just how much of Promised Land was truly her musical vision. This album is produced to a level that has not been present on a Dar Williams album since End Of The Summer, which many people consider her pop-sell-out album.

Dar Williams is a folk-rock artist and on Promised Land, she manages to find a full, rich sound that is much more pop-rock than succumbing to the more obvious conceits of folk rock. This does not mean that she sacrifices her well-developed sense of musical storytelling that she has become quite well-known for. Instead, she takes the musical stories and gives them a more pop-rock spin. Take, for example, her new song "Buzzer." This is easily the most psychologically horrific song Williams has written and performed since "The Great Unknown" or "February" (from her first two albums). Unlike those slow, stark sounding songs, though, Williams infuses "Buzzer" with enough musical chaos to actually show what it is she is singing about.

"Buzzer" is a brilliant song that - because of its themes - could never be a successful pop-rock song, despite the fact that it has a great hook and a frantic quality that young people could easily dance to. Given, however, that the track is all about being a part of an experiment involving punishing test subjects with electroshock. As the song gruesomely describes the protagonist simply going along with the experiment, anyone with a soul and reason will simply become terrified by the direction. Williams, however, turns it on its ear by making a very folk-like social commentary with the song when she continues, "The man said 'Do you know what a fascist is?' / I said, 'Yeah, it's when you do things you're not proud of, / But you're scraping by, taking orders from above.' / I get it now, I'm the face, I'm the cause of war / We don't have to blame white-coated men anymore. / When I knew it was wrong, I played it just like a game, / I pressed the buzzer . . ." ("Buzzer"). The song gives me chills every time I hear it and the musical cacophony that accompanies the lyrics sells the concept far better than the live performance of it did. Moreover, I swear, each time I hear it, I hear her sing "white-hooded men" in that line. When most of us think of music, we do not think of it as a medium for psychological horror, but Dar Williams does and that vantage point makes her works so compelling and creepy in the case of tracks like "Buzzer."

But more than freaking her listeners out with songs about scientific experimentation, Williams continues to sing about relationships, both personal and political. One of the superlative tracks in this regard is "Troubled Times," the cover from Fountains Of Wayne. It always irritates me when one of the best tracks is a cover, but having never heard the Fountains Of Wayne version, it strikes me when Williams sings "Maybe one day soon / It will all come out / How you dream about each other sometimes / With the memory of / How you once gave up / But you made it through the troubled times" ("Troubled Times"). The song gives pretty dim prospects to the couple involved, but it is well written and it reflects the pop-style sensibilities Williams is singing in on Promised Land.

Williams is not absent in the ballads on interpersonal relationships, though. Perhaps one of her best songs - to date - is "The Easy Way," which is very much in Williams's writing style. She sings the musical story with lines like "I knew a guy. I thought he was my first love, / But he had to decided between me and the one before, / And she stacked it all up, like a house of cards, / Said if he didn't come back, he'd find her flattened on the floor. / And though I went and lived in my own Hell / Thought that I could die as well, / I let him go where he thought he had to go" ("The Easy Way"). And it is wrenching, but there is a melancholy triumphant quality to it that makes it work perfectly.

Unfortunately, more than any other Dar Williams album, Promised Land is plagued by repetition. The opening track, "It's Alright" (sic) repeats the title thirty-three times in the course of the short song and it is a troublingly monotonous chant more than anything else. Similarly, "Book Of Love" repeats the title with a melodic monotony that gets old real quick. As well, "You Are Everyone" has a quiet quality that does not adequately fit the seething rage of the lyrics. Here is a song where the protagonist is characterizing the subject as the embodiment of everyone who has done her wrong and it's a little ballad.

Promised Land is easy to listen to and there a few moments of genuine musical surprise. On "The Business Of Things," there is an amazing Flugel horn interlude that is so different from everything else on the album it is heartwrenching and so beautiful. This contrasts well the guitar and piano tracks that characterize much of the rest of the album. The problem musically and vocally is that many of the tracks sound like one another or like other Dar Williams tracks. One of the reasons I probably like "Buzzer" so much is that it sounds a lot like "Beautiful Enemy" from My Better Self. Similarly, " Go To The Woods" bears a similarity in musical and vocal stylings to "Empire" or "Teen For God," perhaps.

Fans of Dar Williams are likely to enjoy the album because it is new songs by Dar Williams! Well, mostly. But those same fans who are able to look objectively at the work will likely be the first to admit that the album does sound remarkably similar to other works presented by Dar Williams in the past. That is not, necessarily, a bad thing, but we do find ourselves wanting and expecting more of this talented singer-songwriter.

It is also worth noting that Dar Williams does a phenomenal job of promoting other artists with Promised Land. The liner notes are filled with pictures of paintings and artwork by artists Williams selected for the album. Every painting is credited and that is pretty tremendous for the artists represented.

The best track is "The Easy Way" ("Buzzer" freaks me out too much to want to credit it as the superlative track) and the low point is "It's Alright" which breaks a long tradition of Williams opening her albums strong.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
The Green World
The Beauty Of The Rain
Out There Live
Many Great Companions

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Mellow Dar: The Beauty Of The Rain

The Good: Dar Williams' voice, Decent lyrics, Creativity
The Bad: Inconsistent instrumentals, Homogenous quality of sound, Duration
The Basics: In a significantly quieter album than usual, Dar Williams delivers more poignant lyrics with her amazing voice on The Beauty Of The Rain.


Dar Williams has a great deal of energy and enthusiasm and she has historically used that to create a diverse range of music that originally earned her the label of "folk artist." As her albums have progressed, she has continued that tradition of diverse sounds, powerful issues and intrigue on her albums. It is somewhat baffling, then, that on The Beauty of the Rain, Dar Williams' mid-2000s album, she seems to forsake that for a more consistent mellow sound.

The Beauty Of The Rain is essentially a slow album that could chart any song on it on the AM light rock stations around the country. Well, it could if the nation still had a network of AM light rock stations. Instead, this is a quiet album that seems noticeably lacking of the up-tempo contrast songs that Williams usually puts on her albums by way of balance. Indeed, Williams' most famous song "As Cool As I Am," is an up-tempo piece that opens Mortal City. There is no such track on The Beauty of the Rain.

I've listened to this album now a dozen times and it is finally growing on me. There are a few factors that caused me to reverse my original opinion on this album. After the first listen, I was horribly disappointed. The Beauty Of The Rain seemed to me to be utterly lacking in energy and charisma. Add to that, the disc is less than 38 minutes long. I loathe short c.d.s. The songs blended one into another and I could not, after four listens, tell a single lyric or song that truly stood out.

I'm so glad I am not a professional reviewer, because my initial reaction to this album would have led to a depressed and scathing review. What I've learned since my first few listens is that I was wrong. No, the album is still dreadfully short and all of the tracks (including the almost reggae "I Saw A Bird Fly Away") are quiet and understating, never breaking through and actually rocking out. But some of my other opinions have since certainly changed.

First is, despite the way the songs flow from one to another, there are definitely different tracks. When I turned the volume up from 2 to 2 1/2, I suddenly found the differences and there is a nice sense of flow between the very different "Mercy of the Fallen," "Farewell to the Old Me" and "I Saw A Bird Fly Away." Indeed, the haunting "Whispering Pines" is almost a shock before the more up-tempo "Your Fire Your Soul."

The emphasis on this album is almost solely in the lyrics, though a variety of musical instruments are used beyond simply guitars and pianos here. Williams is a masterful poet and she is not afraid to show it. She captures a wide array of themes, even if they sound so similar on this album. She tackles confusion ("The Mercy of the Fallen") to resolve ("Farewell To The Old Me"), hurt ("The Beauty Of The Rain") and love ("The One Who Knows") and contrasts pure imagery ("I Saw A Bird Fly Away") with a surprisingly clear retelling of a dream ("Fishing In the Morning"). She also has a cover song "Whispering Pines" which fits the motifs and contrasts so well that until I read the liner notes, I did not know it was not her song. Her musical exploration of humanity continues with clever lyrics that do not use the typical rhyme schemes, like:

"I have watched the kids who make their scenes. I have met the riot grrls who print their zines.
They write the word, they raise a thought. They say who they are, then try what they're not.
Because life is such a changing art. Life is such a changing art."
("The World's Not Falling Apart")

At least on par with the amazing lyrics of Dar Williams is her voice. She has an incredible voice that softly traverses the soprano and alto ranges. She has a smooth voice that perfectly articulates her wonderful lyrics. On "Whispering Pines," she has a haunting harmony that is beautiful and once again illustrates perfectly that Dar is a woman who can sing. She sings amazingly and she is not afraid to use her voice. Never on The Beauty Of The Rain is there a moment where the album comes close to being overproduced. Williams works on understatement everywhere, save the presentation of her voice and her lyrics. There she is pretty much unstoppable.

The problem with recommending The Beauty Of The Rain is that most listeners will not have to wait five times before the album gets underneath their skin. A fan of Dar Williams will give her the chance, but those who are not already fans of hers will have trouble getting into this album and are likely to give up on it, even though her voice and lyrics are wonderful. In the end, I recommend it because it has grown on me and I'm confident anyone who wants something romantic, quiet and definitely an alternative to the standard pop-rock that we hear on the radio today.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
The Green World
Out There Live
Many Great Companions

7/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Many Great Companions: Dar Williams' "Best Of" (So Far) Album That Offers Nothing Truly New To Fans.

The Good: Duration, Good songs, Great vocals, Generally wonderful lyrics.
The Bad: Nothing genuinely new, Repetitive tracks.
The Basics: Dar Williams 2010 double-c.d. release of her singles is more an essential work for those who do not have Williams’ other albums than for her fans.


A few days before my recent birthday, my wife discovered that there was a new Dar Williams album coming out and sight unseen (or ear unheard) she bought it for me for my birthday. Between Many Great Companions and Heather Nova’s The Jasmine Flower (click here for that review!) it was a pretty wonderful birthday in the music department! The first surprise my wife and I got with Many Great Companions was that it was a two-disc set. The second surprise was that it was a “best of” or “singles” album, a compilation and while the first disc features remixes of Dar Williams songs, the second disc is a collection of studio releases from her seven prior studio albums.

For a change in formula, I want to start at the bottomline. Many Great Companions is an exhibition of what Dar Williams fans already know: the woman has serious talent as an artist and as a performer. What the album does not do is reward those of us who figured that out a decade or more ago by providing us with anything truly new. As a result, Many Great Companions is an ideal compilation to sway the masses to what the few already know: that Dar Williams is a musical artist worth their time and attention. But for those of us who hoped that when Dar Williams came out with an inevitable “Best Of” album, she would compile all of her rare tracks onto a bonus c.d. (the live version of “O Canada Girls,” the two or three different live tracks from My Better Self which were found on exclusive albums at Barnes & Noble and Borders, etc.), we remain either disappointed or with essentially duplicated albums in our collection. While Williams might not have wanted to disappoint the collectors in her audience, it is unfortunate that if she were releasing alternate versions of her established songs – which is what disc one of Many Great Companions does – that she would not have thrown on the additional b-sides to give value to her fans who were buying it anyway.

That said, Many Great Companions does what it sets out to do quite well by showcasing most of the best of Dar Williams and arguably what is most impressive about the album is how it manages to include recordings from all of the phases of her career, not just her oldest stuff and not just her newest works. Many Great Companions is an exceptionally balanced recording and as such, fans who might not have heard her works since their college days will be delighted to hear what she has been up to and for fans who are about to be stranded on a desert island with only one Dar Williams recording, well, now they have it.

With two discs totaling over two hours of music (50:17 and 78:05 on the two discs), Many Great Companions is largely the work of folk-rock artist Dar Williams. The album has thirty-two tracks, six of which are duplicated over the two discs, and only one of them was not written by Williams (“Better Things”). On her new recordings of her classic songs, Williams plays guitars on each and every track and she provides the primary vocals throughout the entire album. As well, Williams acts as a co-producer on the compilation, so it is hard to argue that the album sounds like anything but what she wanted it to sound like.

What the album generally sounds like is mellow folk music. The first disc of Many Great Companions strips away some of the production elements on songs like “What Do You Hear In These Sounds” and “If I Wrote You” to give her classic tracks a more acoustic feel to it. While this is almost imperceptibly different on songs like her ballad “I’ll Miss You,” the “songs revisited with guitar and a few friends” (disc one) sounds like an intimate live performance without the annoying crowd noises. What this provides the listener is the chance to hear what it is like to hear Williams at a concert when she has limited accompaniment. This is very much the “one woman with a guitar” folk music sound.

The second disc, labeled “The Best Of Dar Williams” illustrates that Williams is not at all stuck in that rut. On that disc, songs like “It’s Alright” and “Teen For God” erupt with energy, production and more instrumentation which shows a growth curve for Williams beyond her humble musical beginnings. Songs like “Empire” are produced with a scope to them which makes their theme more apparent and powerful, which is something necessary for a strong social commentary song. This offers perfect contrast to even her more produced version of “The One Who Knows,” which is an intimate song on either album.

In fact, all one truly finds themselves wishing for – if not truly exclusive tracks – are other tracks which Williams might not have considered her best, but which are her standards. In other words, fans already have so many recordings of “When I Was A Boy” and “The Babysitter’s Here;” we did not need another one of each of those on disc one, considering the familiar versions were on disc two and they were quite adequate. I would have thrilled to hear a redone version of “You’re Aging Well” or even “Mortal City” (or one of my personal favorites, “The Great Unknown,” which I’ve never managed to get Williams to perform live when she asks her audience to scream for a song on the spot).

For those unfamiliar with Dar Williams, Williams is a folk rock singer who has exceptional range from the alto to the soprano registers. On songs like “Book Of Love,” she effectively transverses those registers in a way that transfixes the audience. She is able to sing fast and with great articulation on songs like “Teen For God” and “Empire” and slower and with a real depth of emotion on songs like “The Babysitter’s Here” and “After All.” There is a beautiful intimacy to the works on her first disc as she is accompanied by vocalists like Mary Chapin Carpenter (on “The One Who Knows”), Patty Larkin (“When I Was A Boy”) and Sara and Sean Watkins (“The Christians And The Pagans”). Williams smartly chose accompanying artists who would not overwhelm her vocals and the album is a beautiful display of the vocal talents of Dar Williams.

What is more limited than anything else on the album is the instrumentation. While the second disc shows real variety and range, even for an artist primarily on the guitar or a piano, the first disc is all rerecorded works that move a variety of different songs into a more narrow sound. Even at her concerts, Dar Williams has more energy and musical diversity than the sound of her with her own guitar as presented on the first disc in Many Great Companions. As a result, it is hard not to feel a little cheated by that recording, though the songs are still pleasant to listen to.

What Dar Williams has going for her more than most contemporary musical artists is a great writing ability. Williams writes a lot about relationships (“The Ocean,” “The Easy Way”) and how turbulent they can be as well as the simple joys of love and life (“As Cool As I Am”). Many of her best songs, though, are infused with a melancholy which takes their youthful view and brings a more mature outlook to it. So, for example, her classic storysong “The Babysitter’s Here” climaxes with a turn from the youthful joy of spending time with a favored babysitter to “But it's Saturday night I can't sleep and we're watching the news. / She says, ‘Do me a favor don't go with a guy who would make you choose.’ / And I don't understand and she tries to explain / And all that mascara runs down in her pain / 'Cause she's leaving me, oh” (“the Babysitter’s Here”). Williams creates interesting characters in her musical storysongs and that makes the entire album engaging.

As well, Williams does not shy away from strong social commentary. Despite the change in administration in the United States (though one might not know it from last night’s midterm election results), Williams’ social commentary songs like “Empire” still ring true. While thinly veiled against George W. Bush with lines like “Who's afraid of the son? / Who would question the goodness of the mighty? / We who banish the threat, / When your little ones all go nighty nighty? / Well there's no time for doubt right now, / And less time to explain. / So get back on your horses, / Kiss my ring, / And join our next campaign, / And the Empire grows. . .” (“Empire”), Dar Williams expresses with great musical ability a fear of totalitarian regimes. That is more than admirable, it is incredible.

And Williams has a poignancy for the obscure. Her song “After All” remains a masterwork of lyrics and sound as she sings about the agonizing, suicidal, level of devotion that comes from losing love. When she sings “Well the sun rose / So many colors, it nearly broke my heart / It worked me over like a work of art / And I was part of all that / So go ahead, push your luck / Say what it is you gotta say to me / We will push on into that mystery / And it'll push right back / And there are worse things than that / Cause for every price / And every penance that I could think of / It's better to have fallen in love / Than never to have fallen at all” (“After All”) it is hard not to be stopped with respect for the human struggle and the magnitude of human emotions. Dar Williams phrases it with absolute perfection.

In the end, Many Great Companions is a worthwhile album, but it is hardly the essential album fans like me were hoping for when we heard Williams had a new album out. On the plus side, one suspects Many Great Companions will have its day, rise and fall and Williams will keep on producing music. And perhaps in twenty years, we will get a full anthology of her works which have as much depth as this compilation, without the flaws. Williams is an artist who has that ability and we applaud her when she uses that talent. And for those who have never heard her works, well, now Many Great Companions is here for you to rectify that.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
The Green World
Out There Live

7.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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"When Did Sex Get So Mean? When Did Crime Get So Clean?" The Green World Rocks!

The Good: Great music, lyrics, vocals, Replays surprisingly well for an album so short.
The Bad: Short, Finding the limited edition version is a bear!
The Basics: Dar Williams reaches perfection with The Green World, an album available in standard or limited edition versions which is perfect either way!


Back in college, a friend of mine introduced me to the works of Dar Williams and few years later, my mother treated me to a Dar Williams concert on Valentine's Day. I spent that day scrambling to try to find a Dar Williams album locally, as Williams is famous for coming out after her concerts and autographing. I did not manage to find any and I went to the concert with enough money to buy one if they were selling one there. They were not. I found myself seated behind a young woman who was happily showing off her Limited Edition version of The Green World, The Green World being the latest album by Williams at that time. It took me over a decade before I saw the limited edition version again and it was my wife who found the exceptionally rare c.d. for me. After years of looking, she found my grail gift before my first birthday with us together. That's a pretty awesome partner!

But it is not just the anticipation for this disc that led me to declare it a perfect album. The Green World is an exceptional album of folk-rock music and one which is great in defiance of many things I do not usually like in contemporary music. Those who read my many music reviews will know that I am not a fan of "Christian rock," as it tends to be a very narrow interpretation of Christianity that is presented as musical propaganda. The Green World is not Christian Rock, though it has several overt references and allusions to Christianity and Dar Williams presents a few songs which are about prayer, god and even Jesus which are inspiring, inspired and/or just plain clever. The Green World is also about relationships and the most difficult choices we face in life, making for a compelling musical experience which is uncommon.

With eleven (or twelve, depending upon whether or not one is lucky enough to stumble upon the uber-rare Limited Edition version or not) songs clocking out at 42:38 (or 47:35), The Green World is only hampered by being short. For a musical artist as creative as Dar Williams it is astonishing how little new music she created for this album. Even so, this is very much the creative work of singer-songwriter Dar Williams. Williams wrote all of the songs and she performs all of the lead vocals on this album. As well, on almost every track, Williams plays at least one musical instrument. The only creative aspect Dar Williams was not involved with on this album was the production.

On The Green World, Dar Williams sings about having faith (“Playing To The Firmament,” “And A God Descended”), surviving mental illness and/or suicide (“After All”), and changes in life (“Spring Street”). She also sings about creative influences in art (“I Won’t Be Your Yoko Ono”) and love (“Another Mystery”). Dar Williams does not abandon her folk audience who essentially made her career as she presents musical storysongs like “We Learned The Sea.” However, The Green World is much more than a classical folk album. Instead, it has a modern sound and feel to it; those looking for a starkly produced folk album will be disappointed by the time “And A God Descended,” the second track, begins.

The album instead sounds like an alternative pop-rock album – “alternative” having become a hodgepodge of anything that did not achieve commercial success – with a rich guitar, piano, bass and percussion sound on almost every track. Within those instruments, though, Dar Williams creates a sound that is very diverse. “After All” is soft, slow and melodic , while “Another Mystery” has an almost Country sound with its upbeat, singsong instrumental accompaniment.

As for the vocals, Dar Williams continues to illustrate her phenomenal range on The Green World. While nothing quite compares to seeing Dar Williams live, on The Green World, her vocals are near-flawless and the result is a listening experience which is smooth, clear and sometimes heartwrenching. Williams tends to perform in the soprano range for The Green World and while she goes lower on “What Do You Love More Than Love,” she stretches to the highest points of the register for “Calling The Moon” and she presents her songs melodically and with an uncommon beauty.

Lyrically, there are few vocalists who are performing smarter original material than Dar Williams. While “After All” might seem an obvious choice because it is one of Dar Williams more popular songs, there is a reason for that. Anyone who has ever struggled with life and death and/or mental health issues hears “And when I chose to live / There was no joy / It's just a line I crossed / I wasn't worth the pain my death would cost / So I was not lost or found . . . So go ahead, push your luck / Say what it is you gotta say to me / We will push on into that mystery / And it'll push right back /And there are worse things than that / Cause for every price / And every penance that I could think of / It's better to have fallen in love / Than never to have fallen at all” (“After All”) it is hard not to be moved to tears. Williams has a powerful knack for creating perfect lyrical embodiments of complex emotions.

That’s not to say the album isn’t fun or doesn’t have some moments of fun to it. With “Another Mystery,” she makes a stab at playful and she succeeds. Using more creative imagery than most musical artists performing today, she presents her lines “You could pursue it, hell I could do it, / I'll just be quiet when I get angry and hurt, / I'm stopping traffic, cinemagraphic, / With my long black coat hanging down in the dirt, / And my hair clinging to my face in the rain, / Like a goddess from the cult of beautiful pain / I don’t want to be another mystery” (“Another Mystery”) and she reminds the listener how fun it can be to throw oneself completely into love.

And, despite my usual bugaboo about faith-based music, Dar Williams does it remarkably well on The Green World. Indeed, she sings more about faith than any individual religion (though there are druidic references in “Calling The Moon” and Christian references in songs like “And A God Descended”) and here her imagery makes the songs more about faith, questioning religion and finding something to believe in as opposed to pushing any one religious agenda. With lyrics like “well you mend your clothes and patch your roof / And slivers of god’s shattered truth / Grow tender as the grass in clean swept yards” (“And A God Descended”) Williams teleports even the cynics to a world where it’s better to believe in something than to fall apart.

As for the limited edition version, that c.d. comes in a plastic-less package (to promote the idea of a green world) and it has the additional track “O Canada Girls.” I held out for the limited edition version, though it took a decade for someone to find me a copy!, because at my first concert Williams performed the song live and it was exceptional for me. With or without the bonus track, The Green World is a perfect album.

While “After All” is the superlative track, what caught me about The Green World was how it is a perfect album, becoming more than the sum of its parts. Instead of being a random collection of singles, this album is a strong work where the listener is taken on a musical journey thematically and through different musical styles that holds up exceptionally well over multiple listens.

For other works by Dar Williams, please check out my reviews of:
The Honesty Room
Mortal City
Out There Live

10/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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