Venue: Triple Door - Seattle, WA
Date: Wed., September 30, 2009
Opener: Chris Pureka
CHRIS PUREKA
Northampton, Massachusetts, it can be said, has its own sound. The inland town's proximity to area colleges, Boston, and New York City make it a hotbed of singer-songwriter activity. In fact, Dar Williams spent a portion of her career living in Northampton and is, in no small part, characteristic of the singer-songwriter aesthetic that seems to pour out of that area.
Chris Pureka is another example. Flanked this night by a pedal steel player and a Porchboard bass pedal, Pureka played a short set of languid, introspective love songs. Her vocals brush against an airy implication of sadness, without actually stepping inside. I've seen Pureka deliver more convincingly, but there was something about this performance that felt a little less engaged.
Still, she pulled mostly from her latest EP, Chimera, and shared a few tunes from an album she says she'll be releasing in the coming months.
DAR WILLIAMS
Dar Williams has been onstage for about two decades now, and it's quite clear she's comfortable behind a microphone. Her between-song banter seems to have gotten longer and longer through the years. Still, having seen her live a number of times, I've yet to hear the same story twice. That Williams has such a thick cache of stories and experiences to draw from is perhaps her greatest asset.
Her performances are exercises in open interpretation and the way art changes over time. Despite the insistence of audience members to shout out requests throughout the show, Williams stuck to a fairly solid set list which drew from each of her ten albums, including last year's Promised Land. She pulled Pureka onstage for a collaborative turn on "It's Alright," but the biggest highlights of hte night drew from deeper in Williams' catalog.
The finest performance of the night came from "Are You Out There" - her tribute to New York-based Pacifica radio station WBAI, which she credits with teaching her how to "question the questions as well as the answers." While slower, more introspective tunes like "The Beauty of the Rain" and "Mercy of the Fallen" are some of her finest tunes on record, this night the more upbeat tunes translated far better.
Dar Williams is on tour now. For a full list of dates, visit her Web site at DarWilliams.com
