ALBUM REVIEW / POP : She’s Got Quite a Lot to Say About Most Everything : ***, DAR WILLIAMS, “Mortal City”, Razor & Tie
Alterna-folkie Williams has the soul of a poet and the heart of a kid, a combination that allows her to be intensely sensitive one moment, endearingly wide-eyed the next. In the best songs, she’s both.
This sophomore effort is a thematic bookend to “The Honesty Room,” her impressive 1995 debut. As in that album, Williams has something to say about most everything she experiences, which is plenty--new love, lost love, hilariously dysfunctional families, even power shortages.
Her strongest songs are the most concise (“Family,” with its heart-on-sleeve cry for comforting) or the funniest (“The Christians and the Pagans,” a holiday from hell that unexpectedly turns heavenly).
Her captivating voice is part Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant and Jill Sobule. If she pares down some of the wordiness, she might become the female John Prine.
* New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).
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