The Promise of Dar

Dar Williams has been among my favorite musicians for nearly a decade now, having been introduced to Mortal City by my favorite high school teacher as a way of easing me into folk music. With the release of her latest album, My Better Self, I had been hoping for the long-awaited return to the quality that hooked me back then. I have enjoyed everything she has recorded since, without a doubt, but alas, this Amazon reviewer sums up all too well the way her last several albums have been received:

"My Better Self" is arguably Dar's most accomplished album since "Mortal City", but lyrically it still falls well below the mark set by her first two albums. Somehow the major poetry ("major" as in Paul Simon, later Lennon/McCartney, earlier Billy Joel major) in songs like "Traveling Again", "When Sal's Burned Down", "The Babysitter's Here", "Iowa", "As Cool As I Am", and "Western New York" turned into a Frankenstein third album, and then two nice sounding albums with far too many boring cliches, and now this: a *very* nice sounding album with some great collaborations, where, unfortunately, the best poetry is in the covers.

If the above seems surprisingly negative for a 4-star review, it's because Dar still has one of the most amazing voices out there, and because she and her people have gotten very skilled at blending the best elements of folk, indie pop, and old-school Beatles pop into something both soothing and challenging to my ear. As a poetry lover, though, I have to say that Dar needs to go back and read some Auden, some Millay, some... something. The author of "The Ocean" has far too much poetic talent to be coasting.

Scratch the Billy Joel reference and I feel the same way. It may be unfair to expect so much from one person, particularly when you get the sense that a lot of what drives a great artist is the pain of life (especially when you really read the lyrics to a song like "The Ocean"). So when an artist cheers up, gets married, and her music stops hitting those very highest notes of genius, it is awful to say that you wish she were more depressed and thus more lyrically creative. Still, the feeling lingers.