Dar Williams’ new album reaches for a broader audience

Dar Williams is not a household name, it’s true. She came of age in the halls of Wesleyan University, where, as she has said, the pressure to be innovative was “quite relentless actually” and where the preeminent performance artist, Yoko Ono, once had a musician boyfriend you might have heard of. Williams channeled her creative impulses into songwriting. She rose through the ranks of the folk scene in the early 1990s on the hit, “The Babysitter’s Here,” which was recorded on her own label, then picked up and released by Waterbug Records before being included in her major label debut, “The Honesty Room.”

“Babysitter” is a pretty good glimpse of what Williams is all about: honesty and revelation. It’s the simple story of a little girl who thinks her babysitter is the greatest person in the world. But there’s trauma and angst there as well, as Williams relates how all childhood things someday get left behind.
And so it was that Williams soon left the small folk circuit and honed her truthful blend of comedic irony and sadness through 1996’s “Mortal City” and 1997’s “End of the Summer,” which garnered praise and radio play alike for the singles “Are You Out There” and “What Do You Hear in These Sounds.” After releasing “Green World” in 2000 she recorded the awesome live collection “Out There Live,” which marked the end of an era of sorts. If Dar Williams had to grow up sometime, she did so with “The Beauty of the Rain.”

After moving to New York and settling into a new life there, her style changed as well. “The Beauty of the Rain” is fuller, broader in scope and layered with top-notch guest artists including Alison Kraus, John Popper and John Medeski. The album forgoes her folk-inspired sound for a more adult contemporary one. Layers of instruments, from percussion and string sections to keyboards, create soundscapes behind richer harmonies and more elaborate production.

In the same vein as the 2003 release, her latest album, “My Better Self,” hits stores Sept. 13. “This is an album where I’m thinking about where we are right now in history … the songs all put stuff out on the table I find important. Less metaphor and more me,” Williams says in her press materials. The Razor & Tie Records release features a fresh list of guest artists as well: Marshall Crenshaw, Patty Larkin, Stone Chuch alumni Soulive, and a duet with Ani Difranco on Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”

While “Confortably Numb” is a little disappointing, the Soulive number “Two Sides of the River” is fantastic and showcases the backing unit’s chops, as well as their energy and gumption, which Williams obviously got caught up in while recording. There are some nods to her folk past, including the opening track, “Teen for God,” which is very singable and funny, and “Liar.” But this is a more grown-up version of Dar Williams’ music, and the album is replete with lush harmonies and deep tracking that please the ears of a wider group of listeners on tracks like “So Close to My Heart,” “The Blue Light of the Flame” and “The Hudson.” 

 “My Better Self” moves easily from track to track, all of the musicians adding their voices to the songs. “I was really excited to hear all these incredible details that were put in without my noticing at the time,” Williams says of the recording process. “I wanted to bring in members of my touring band who I have never recorded with before.” She added them into the lineup, which includes musicians and producers from her last album as well as the other guests. The talent here is obvious, though it can overwhelm, at times, what we came to the party for: Dar Williams.

One way Williams bridges her folk upbringing of community awareness with her new, more expanded view is with a charitable initiative called Echoes. In different cities along the tour route, she will help raise awareness for local charities both in her show and in her promotional effort on the radio and with ads. The initiative comes out of the new album’s song “Echoes,” which focuses on the idea that even by doing something small and personal, the kindness echoes across the globe. “It’s a feeling thing, not a thinking thing,” she said of the initiative.

There’s a lot of feeling on “My Better Self,” and that is one constant in the career of Dar Williams: she has always laid herself bare in her songs. And while she wasn’t a little girl when she released her first album, the simplicity and eagerness of “The Honesty Room” has been fully left behind by the older and wiser songwriter as the deeper, more confident “My Better Self” hits shelves. It’s a solid effort in its own right, but evokes nostalgia too. As Williams would understand, sometimes we all miss the past.


Dar Williams
at the Ioka Theater
with opening act Girlyman
Monday, Sept. 19
Presented by The Stone Church
Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 at the door
Showtime: 7:30 p.m.