Beauty of the Rain' masked by machinery

It's dangerous to think about an artist's work in terms of her life, but Dar Williams's new album, Beauty of the Rain, makes it hard to forget her recent and long-awaited marriage. After albums of songs reaching and straining for higher truth, this album seems a giant breath of relief.

Dar, as she is known by her fans, is a folk singer who began in the Northampton coffee house scene in the mid-1990s. Her older albums, such as End of the Summer and The Honesty Room, featured a turmoil of post-adolescent ironies, and we came to know her voice by a Shakira-like undulation that matched this turmoil.

The tunes of Beauty of the Rain, while not her best, allow the full quality of Dar's voice to be heard, unbroken by impatient scales. "The One Who Knows" and "The Beauty of the Rain", which are the closest we come on the album to the preferable Dar-and-the-guitar, hold the strength of her vocals against the honest poetry that only she can create. Alison Krauss, one of the honey-rock sirens from the soundtrack of Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, sings harmony on "The One Who Knows" and the cover of The Band's "Whispering Pines", a wise choice because her sweet voice complements Dar's depth without distracting from it.

I can hold out for the slightly more chaotic arrangements of "Closer to Me" and "Your Fire Your Soul" because they too are quality Dar lyrics, but others have so much synthesizer and unconventional back-up vocals that they distract from the real song. "The Mercy of the Fallen", an inspiring, forgiving, tender song that reaches out to what the liner notes call "the roadside Buddhas," could start the album off invitingly if it didn't give a thorough lesson in electric appreciation.

"I Saw a Bird Fly Away" is fun, but rather un-profound. Although John Popper's bit of back-up vocals and harmonica toward the end is lovely, there are so many instruments and vocals coming at the listener, that by the time he starts, one doesn't appreciate his contribution to the song as a whole. If you're going to feature John Popper on your album, why not do away with the synthesizers and let him secure his wild improvisation around the core of the piece? It sounded as if he had been accidentally recorded from the next room.

A highlight of this album is the liner notes -- below each set of lyrics are a couple sentences about its arrangement, its inspiration, or its purpose. Dar also includes where the song was begun and finished (Canada, the UK, and the Museum of Natural History to name a few).

The best songs are not necessarily those that pop out after a single listen of the album. "Farewell to the Old Me", declares the second song, and the refrain "The world's not falling apart / because of me" take much less responsibility than the spoken word of past songs like "Mortal City." If you're looking for a holistic inspiration, I'd still go with "End of the Summer," but I must say that the chorus of "The Beauty of the Rain" is still haunting me. To quote a phrase, the album is worth listening to. The very wind is in her voice.