The perfect way to decompose your music collection

For the “Promised Land”, Dar Williams worked with Grammy nominated producer Brad Wood, who has also produced for Liz Phair, Pete Yorn, and Ben Lee. Dar Williams’ music exists within the folk-pop genre, and utilizes her guitar skills and the drums of Better Than Ezra’s Travis McNabb. She also invited other guest musicians as well throughout the album. Folk-pop does not describe her genre at all. The album sounded like mainstream countryish-pop that has melodies that can be expected throughout. I anticipated a peach in an apple grove, but I only found apples. Apples, apples, and apples with inchworms crawling in and out. Yum. The first time I listened to this CD, I thought of the dog that always goes to my leg and starts humping away every time I see it. You just want to shake it off and make it go away before it leaves a stain on your pants. It’s hard to get out stains. Okay, it was a decrepit metaphor, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Dar Williams has released seven albums in the past eighteen years, and thank goodness I have not heard them for the result of seven stains on my pants. Alright, the other albums may be okay, but it’s been said this is her best album yet, so I’m assuming her other albums reek of crusty salmon. Williams did two covers on her album. “Troubled Times” by Fountains of Wayne and “Midnight Radio” from the motion picture, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch. ” She sure conjured up some wondrous monotony. Where’s the angst, the passion? Failure. Despite the crusty fish, dog stains, wormy apples, and failures, Williams’ own lyrics aren’t so putrefying. They do have issues pertaining to politics and pro-environment, which is much better than “please have sex with me because I’m hot” implications. On “The Tide Falls Down,” Williams states the separation of loved ones from labor and war, and the longing for one another that cannot be reached. “Parent and child and an ocean between/one is not heard and the other not seen/too many bottles but each had a message inside/it all becomes clear as the tide falls away.” Williams is known to be a green environmentalist, and it shows in “Go To The Woods.” “I’m afraid of the woods/but what I fear more, what I fear most/more than the man, the beast, or the ghost/is that the woods are disappearing”. Yes, I am able to understand the situation as the world keeps expanding into chemically infected goods and the disintegration of the earth, as we built layers of walls to keep us away from nature itself; the place we were originally born. There were other decent lyrics as well, but in finality, it wasn’t enough to keep me from throwing the damn thing out of my car window. If you can get beyond the scratching of the chalkboard in her music, it’s best for it to be crusting in the store.