Cool she is

Now along comes Dar Williams, who threatens to mess up this neat equation, embodying as she does all the different aspects and influences of the four folk queens. Her new Mortal City (Razor & Tie, in stores January 23) comes replete with Colvinesque melodies, DiFranco-ish attitude, Larkinesque introspection, and Lavinesque/Wheeleresque humor. That may not make Williams the female-folk-Beatles incarnate, but it does propel her to the top of the new-folk heap.

It's a position in which many had placed her already on the basis of her live shows and her 1994 debut. When Williams -- who hovered on the Cambridge/Boston folk scene in the early '90s before moving to western Massachusetts in late '92 -- released The Honesty Room, it prompted a great stir in the contemporary folk world. She was the "buzz artist" at that year's annual Folk Alliance convention, which was held here in Boston. In quick succession, she got a management deal, signed with a top folk booking agency, showcased at the Newport Folk Festival, and saw her album picked up by national indie Razor & Tie. Over the past half-year, she has been touring the world opening for Joan Baez, who covered a song of Williams's on her latest album, Ring Them Bells; in November she appeared on the cover of Billboard, which tagged her as a poster child for "modern troubadours."

This initial wave of success was predicated upon a self-produced CD that, though boasting great promise and a few killer cuts, was a flawed and somewhat precious effort -- better than the vast majority of new-folk debuts, certainly, but hardly in the same league as Colvin's debut, Steady On.

With Mortal City, however, Williams lives up to her stellar reputation. From the kickoff track -- "As Cool As I Am," a didjeridoo-and-harmonica-laced rocker with a hip-hop beat -- to the closing number, the seven-plus-minute title track that's a haunting, moody portrait of the alienation of urban life, the CD evinces the confidence of an artist who knows exactly what she wants to express and how best to do so.

Williams and producer Steven Miller, who has worked with Jane Siberry, Suzanne Vega, and Juliana Hatfield, choose arrangements that allow the lyrics, melodies, and Williams's considerable vocal prowess to do most of the work in creating and sustaining drama and intimacy. On "The Christians and the Pagans," a witty portrait of a contemporary holiday gathering, Williams out-Lavinses Christine with her quirky conversational trills. On "Iowa," her voice soars, transforming an ode to the state's rolling landscape into a naked celebration of lust.

The centerpiece, "The Ocean," sets up a romantic's ideal of life in a small seaside town only to see it crushed by harsh reality, personified here by John Prine, whose deadpan vocals (singing lines like "You don't know how precious you are, walking around with your little shoes dangling, I am the one who lives with the ocean/It's where we came from, you know, and sometimes I just want to go back") contrast with Williams's anthemic, swaying chorus: "You don't know how lucky you are, you don't know how much I adore you."

Most of the 11 tunes on Mortal City -- recorded last summer in Williams's bedroom using a piece of cutting-edge, ADAT recording equipment called the Roland DM-800 -- feature just her guitar and vocals and cello, with dobro, fiddle, or mandolin to add color and contrast. Mark Shulman's wailing guitar on "This Was Pompeii" underlines the awesome destruction that Williams digs beneath to find tragedy on an intimate, human scale. "The Blessings" -- one of only a few full-band numbers on a disc that could use a couple more -- could be one of those minor-key folk-rockers favored by R.E.M. a few years back, before Michael Stipe became Bono.

There are a couple of lesser tunes on the disk: one novelty too many, plus "Family," a sparse ballad by Pierce Pettis that feels slight next to Williams's own rich narratives. But this is quibbling. The year has hardly begun, and already we have what will surely prove one of the best albums of 1996.