POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Dar Williams’ Songs Show Wit, Honesty

Honesty really is the best policy, at least where singer-songwriters are concerned. Just listen to Dar Williams, whose simple, crafted folk songs reveal layers of emotion that ring achingly true.

Williams has even titled her recent debut album “The Honesty Room,” though she’s no preacher with an acoustic guitar. In the first of two shows Friday at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, the 28-year-old Massachusetts folk singer was a funny, confident and warm presence, with songs that expand the folk genre yet again with modern lyrics of intelligence and wit.

The singer has already generated a following in New England with her version of a tradition epitomized by the best ‘60s work of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. For Williams, her strengths lie in the simple power of her delicate guitar melodies and the force of her own words and personality.

On the forlorn “When I Was a Boy,” Williams sang of the price paid and innocence lost as children grow into the gender roles of adulthood. And she put a human face on America’s troubled romance with the atom on “The Great Unknown.”

Humor was a central ingredient to Williams’ show. During a sing-along to the song “Iowa,” she jokingly instructed the crowd to pull out its cigarette lighters for a big Farm Aid finale. But beneath all the cleverness and humor was authentic emotion that lingered long after the laughs had faded.