Artist:     Dar Williams

Album:     I’ll Meet You Here

Label:     Renew Records

Release Date:     10.1.21

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Nothing goes according to plan on I’ll Meet You Here, and that’s fine by singer-songwriter Dar Williams, who’s grown accustomed to adapting to new circumstances. She’s wiser now and more willing to take things as they come.

Into the velvety richness and low simmer of “Time, Be My Friend,” Williams’ softly weathered voice sews the words, “You will never say you love me/But I can love just what I get.” She’s done wasting her energy wondering what’s on the horizon. “I know there’s only now and yesterday,” she sings, promising not to take the precious days she has left for granted.

On a moving and spare remake of “You’re Aging Well,” she revisits the past, as Bryn Roberts’ lovely piano stroll walks alone with Williams’ delicate, fluttering vocals to the very end of I’ll Meet You Here. It’s the song that first attracted Joan Baez to her burgeoning artistry, and they once recorded it together, before Baez introduced Williams to the world as her opening act on tour.

That was a long time ago, and Williams is growing older gracefully, having crafted some of the most accessible and gratifying folk-pop of her career on the melodic I’ll Meet You Here. If only the lifelong resident of the beautifully rendered, regretful “Little Town” was as welcoming of immigrants and diversity, as deep dives of cello elegantly trace a timely evolution of thinking. It’s a slice of honest, yet ultimately hopeful, Americana that is slow to accept change.

Williams isn’t so provincial, with the slowly surging “Berkeley” and its flowing instrumental drapery wrapped around a meaningful and literary meditation on the Beat poets. “You Give It All Away,” with its sunny, soulful horns, lives in in the soft, bittersweet comfort of Shawn Colvin, as a daydreaming “Magical Thinking” gently ripples and the imaginative, adventurous “Let the Wind Blow” talks of surviving a life of tempests and tribulations to return home and find peace. I’ll Meet You Here is a wonderful rendezvous.

—Peter Lindblad