Copyright 1996 Adam Barnhart. All Rights Reserved. Fair use of this document.

Dar Williams came to my attention via "Acoustic Sunrise" at the beginning of 1996, where her song The Christians and the Pagans received bi-weekly, if not weekly, airplay on a show that did an otherwise good job of shuffling the musical deck. The attention the song received was well-deserved, standing out to my ears at first listen, musically interesting and dynamic, despite the fact that the music clearly isn't quite co-equal in importance with a set of lyrics that hit on all kinds of oddball material for radio -- the relationship between conventional Christianity and a contemporary model of Paganism; having a traditional nuclear, but open-minded, family; a same sex couple. The song also has a couple of lines that serve as something of a litmus test for potential fans: if you chuckle with the lines "And where does magic come from?/I think magic's in the learning/'Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans/Only pumpkin pies are burning," there's a good chance you'll enjoy what she's doing, if you chuckle (or, worse still, groan) at them, you may just want to keep going.

Listening to the whole album, I found myself clearly in the first group. Absent my unyielding Rush fandom, Mortal City was the best album released in 1996. In a strong musical year (easily the best since Alternative music demanded entry to an already-crowded party in 1991), this strange and wonderful folk singer released a record that outshined releases from a host of longtime favorites, leaving her just short of the 1996 pinnacle, Test for Echo. From the first second of As Cool As I Am, a bouncy, introspective look at relationships, replete with digeridoo, to the closing strains of the sprawling title track, Mortal City makes a bold and definitive statement, updating a traditional folk sound with the issues and concerns of the moment. My initial reaction to the album was a vision of Nanci Griffith crossed with Richard Thompson, but, in reality, the album is a continuation of a folk tradition that includes Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell.

Which becomes all the more important with her new release, End of the Summer. Before even tearing off the shrinkwrap, the fact that changes have been made is obvious. Rather than the more traditionally folky, whispier looks of previous albums, our heroine is looking straight into the camera, honestly but slightly uncomfortably, holding out muddy hands in a slightly awkward way. I'm not much for cover art, generally speaking (despite the size of my collection, I've never purchased a single note of music for its visual representation), but this is truly a harbinger of changes made within. The cover matches its book.

One of the big debates of musical history surrounds the issue of Robert Zimmerman's decision to plug in his guitar. If Dar Williams isn't quite the historical figure Dylan is, the arguing about the sonics of the her album doesn't figure to be much less restrained than they were a few decades ago. As Cool As I Am is a "band" song, to be sure. But the distance between the eccentricity of a folky tune with William Galison's harmonica and Art Baron's digeridoo and the upfront nature of Sammy Merendino's drum loops on Are You Out There is more than typical artistic development. On Mortal City's opener, Dar Williams is a funky folk singer, leaving her in Ani DiFranco's general vicinity. The spookiness and dependence on syncopation of Are You Out There leaves one wondering if she's decided to do battle with Alanis Morissette and Meredith Brooks. Leaving the question unanswered for the moment, the song is a tremendous success, haunting and moving, despite the fact that she's swimming in strange and murky waters.

What Do You Hear in These Sounds is Are You Out There's primary competition as the best song on the album. An unlikely treatment of the experience of psychotherapy, the song is another that leans heavily on a drum loop, propelling the song into a bouncy, yet thoughtful realm. Williams has always been a wordsmith, and, on this particular song, she shows not only the ability to meld idiosyncratic lyrics in a meaningful way, but the ability to assemble lyrics in a Morrisonesque way that has a tremendous sonic effect, separate and distinct from the melody in which the lyrics are couched (appropriately enough, in view of the song's title). The effect of it all is unmistakeably poppy, with a road-tested fan-favorite recontextualized as a more accessible piece, with a surprising result. Rather than making the introspection of the song banal, the drum loops and measured vocal delivery give an aural depth to the song that makes it not only easier to grasp but more meaningful, musically.

Bought and Sold updates a musical figure used on The Honesty Room's Mark Rothko Song and Mortal City's The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed, fusing a traditional folk-guitar line with an otherwise Country/Western musical backdrop. For those who are more familiar with the purer folk of Mortal City, the presence of a steel guitar surely seems a little incongruous, but the strains of Old Country in the song are used to great effect, pushing the New Englander as close to hickdom as she's been, the rapid fire "Ai-y-yippie-yippie-yi-yi-ay" of Flinty Kind of Woman off her debut album aside. While most of Williams' songs are very personal and have a political message only in pointing at certain facets of individual behavior, Bought and Sold is Political with a capital "P," indicting the military-industrial complex in classic 60's folky fashion. Rather than a Utah Phillips ramble or a Zack de la Rocha rage-fest, Williams delivers the lyrics in her understated style, making Uncle Sam and Wall Street sound more cynical still. After listening to Bought and Sold, even Milton Friedman might find himself suddenly espousing Democratic Socialism.

In the middle of all of this boisterous music, fans of Dar Williams who relish her most intimate and acoustic moments still have three quiet, February-esque songs. If I Wrote You and the title track oddly sandwich the much noisier What Do You Hear in These Sounds. The former is Williams at her simplest from an arrangement perspective, singing a basic verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus, with only a little bass/percussion boost over the last half of the song and some vocal help from Richard Shindell. The End of the Summer is simpler still, a woman and her guitar (with a faint hint of electric guitar swells and texturing), relating a sad narrative in an almost through-composed form, falling halfway between February and Mortal City. The equally deliberate My Friends really is just the songstress and her minimalist acoustic guitar playing, providing four minutes of careful emotional balance. In less able hands, the three songs would surely sound hackneyed. On End of the Summer, however, the provide a meaningful counterpoint to the balance of the album, serving as evidence that Williams' roots are still Folk roots, artistic experimentation aside.

As surprising as the prominence of electronic percussion is, the biggest change-up on her latest album may be Dar Willams as Rocker. Changing up on her eminently thoughtful and proper New Englander image a little, Teenagers, Kick Our Butts shows us an more immediate side to Williams, singing short, clipped vocal lines in a song with Jeff Golub's twangy guitar, Mark Egan's midrange-heavy bass and honest-to-Gaia organic drums from Merendino. Listening to Williams' vocals, riding atop the wave of a traditional Rock arrangement, one gets the feeling that she's decided to push her own musical boundaries in any direction within view. It isn't enough that, in addition to singing traditional folk music, she's working Alanis Morissette territory, or winding her way towards LeAnn Rimes and Tricia Yearwood -- she's also taking on Liz Phair (well...perhaps she hasn't gone quite that far: Belinda Carlisle crossed with Courtney Love's earnestness might be a little closer to the mark).

If it isn't quite as successful a rock experiment as Teenagers, Kick Our Butts, Party Generation might be the most interesting social portrait on the album. Poking fun at an overaged party hawk, the song takes an almost Henley-like whack at the anomie of the party animal, deeper than it sounds at first listen, albeit without the melodrama of Hotel California. Again, the Rock sound is used to fuse a newly thirty-something artist with youth, and, if it does sound a little odd in places, doesn't at all sound uncomfortable or forced.

Somewhere between this new Rock sound and the sound of the rest of the album are Road Buddy and her cover of Ray Davies' Better Things. Road Buddy is a swampier song, her disconcertion with her travels amplified by a melody stretching the bottom of her vocal range, a gritty guitar line, and a drum loop with more funk and less bounce. Better Things is a perfect match for Williams, who somehow manages to imbue a single vocal performance with both irony and optimism. On an record that establishes Williams as a somewhat schitzophrenic artist with a diverse palette, the dichotomy of Better Things is a perfect closer.

In yet another category, not easily explicable, is It's a War in There. It's closest relative in the Dar Williams canon is Bought and Sold, two tracks earlier, which has a small portion of the same spookiness and depth. It isn't at all the same experience, though. Jeff Golub, Bill Dillon, and Steve Gaboury are given credit for electric guitar, guitar loops, and "textures," respectively, so precisely who's responsible for what is up for debate, but the end result is some netherworld between Jimi Hendrix, Vernon Reid, and the Bomb Squad. A combination of insistence and translucence, the song sets a mood more strongly than anything else Williams has written.

In January of 1974, Joni Mitchell released Court and Spark, an album that was fairly well-received critically, but disappointed many of her fans, disheartened by the poppy tenor of the album (not to mention the Top 10 success of the single Help Me). Rather than a move to outright commercialism, however, Court and Spark pointed at a desire to experiment with new sounds and musical ideas, which became bolder still on 1976's Hejira and 1979's Mingus, playing with musical legends Jaco Pastorius and Peter Erksine, among others. On End of the Summer, Williams takes a new direction of her own, singing over a musical backdrop that includes bassist Egan (Jaco's student at the Univeristy of Miami) and Sammy Merendino's "sympathetic beat farm" as Peter Erksine. While the album is ultimately slightly less magnificent than Mortal City, it is only so through an extension of Williams' musical powers. Her willingness to experiment and success in doing so looks like the next step in the development of a Folk star of the first order.

Rating: 9.25