Mortal City

Artist: Dar Williams
Label: Razor & Tie
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 793018282123
EAN: 0793018282123
ASIN: B000002ZCC

Release Date: 1996-01-23

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Listmania:

Creme de la creme
Music-Bitter Sweet- Sort of like the blues.
Favorite Folksie Women and More
Songs For Each State (Part One)
favorite CDs
Top Female Artists
Folk, Faith, Learning, & Justice
Poetry in Popular Music
ESSENTIAL FEMALE RECORDS
Beautiful Voices - Classy Music

Tracks:

As Cool As I Am
February
Iowa (Traveling III)
The Christians And The Pagans
This Was Pompeii
The Ocean
Family
The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis Of A Co-Ed
The Blessings
Southern California Wants To Be Western New York
Mortal City

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The Honesty Room
The Beauty of the Rain
End of the Summer
My Better Self
The Green World

Customer Reviews:

Dar Rocks!.......2007-01-13

"Mortal City" is another great Dar Williams CD. The best song on the album is "The Christians and the Pagans" about a family that is a blend of traditional and new age who sit down for a winter holiday dinner. "As Cool as I Am" is about ceasing to be jealous of other women. "February" is a sad song about a couple breaking apart. "The Ocean" is a very catchy song about getting back to our roots. "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-ed" is a funny folk song about smoking pot. "The Blessings" is about recognizing our blessings in life. A great album, with many layers within the songs.

"The Christians and The Pagans is superb".......2006-05-18

This CD is a fine blend of nice vocals and fine insturmental work. "The Christians and The Pagans" is my favorite holiday song about tolerance and healing and restoring family ties.

My favorite album of all time!.......2006-01-26

I often tell my husband that if I ended up stranded on a deserted island with only one CD, this would be my choice. Each song tells a story with incredible lyrics and intoxicating melodies. Dar Williams is a musical genius!

Terrific Album, Superb Songwriter.......2006-01-03

My daughter introduced me to Dar Williams in the latter 1990s and the "Mortal City" album was my first exposure to her striking music. I enjoyed it immensely and have been a fan ever since. Her folk/pop/rock sound is sophisticated and pleasant. Her songwriting, moreover, is poignant and moving and by far the contribution of Dar Williams that I value most. Sometimes her songs are amusing and sometimes they are moving and sometimes they are both at the same time. The best example of this on "Mortal City" is "The Christians and the Pagans." It tells the story of Pagan relatives visiting for Christmas and how the "Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table/Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able/And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said/Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses." Great stuff! A later line sums it up thusly, "now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning."

Equally enjoyable is "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed," which tells the story of an ill-fated college love affair between Dar Williams and a leader of a hemp liberation group. She confides, that they got so stoned at their meetings that it made it hard to discuss glaucoma. Ultimately she is betrayed by her boyfriend "in the arms of a student against the treacherous use of fur." Hilarious!

But by far my favorite song on this album is "Southern California Wants to Be Western New York." About a week after I first heard this album I had to make a business trip to western New York and I felt like the words of the song became real before my eyes. I thought I was seeing that "part of the country with a land that gently creaks and thuds,/Where the heavy snows make the faucets leak in bathrooms with free-standing tubs./They're in houses that are haunted, with the kids who lie awake and think about/All the generations past who used to use that dripping sink." I'm sure that I ate in Dar's prototypical "diner where the coffee tastes like diesel fuel." But the most evocative image in this song is Dar Williams's line about "lusting after a SUNY student with mousy brown hair who is/Taking out the compost, making coffee in long underwear."

There are many other great songs on this album, including the title cut. I'm less enamored with sentimental ballads such as "This was Pompeii" and "February" than with the faster, more humorous songs, but all are engaging. Enjoy!

My favorite album by Dar.......2005-01-09

I have all of Dar's albums, and this remains my favorite one.

The title song, Mortal City, is an interesting story about a very very cold apartment without either radiator heat or electricity. Been there, done that, in Brooklyn apartment buildings. There's an element of romance (more or less, not really) but the main story is the love shown by the city to hospital patients.

The song Family is so sweet, so achingly sweet. Let your love cover me like a pair of angel wings. You are my family.

Southern Cali Wants To Be Western New York is cute. It is a song of respect, maybe of nostalgia, for New York. I'm told it is about Buffalo. Snowy Buffalo. And yet, Dar isn't too fond of the snow in February, is she?

Iowa is a favorite of mine also. She woke up from a nightmare that she couldn't bear - that her lover was walking out on the hills of Iowa and not thinking of her. That line is very meaningful to me, and reminds me of someone I still love, from my past. It's sad when something like that comes true.

This Was Pompeii is beautifully crafted lyrically. We are placed in Pompeii as it is being destroyed by the famous volcano. By the end of the song we see that Pompeii's destruction is comparable to the singer's personal tragedy, her divorce.

Crisis of a Coed is a cute story about Dar's Sagittarius boyfriend in the arms of a woman protesting the cruel use of fur. Yes, Dar, I agree that the fur is already dead.

February is the most striking song on the album, the one that seems to grab everyone's attention right away, even those who aren't fans of Dar. I have never really been very affected emotionally by the depression of winter, so I can't feel what she is going through, and my first impression was that she wasn't even talking about the depression caused by a New England winter, but using it as an allegory as she used the volcano of Pompeii as an allegory. After all, we do know what a flower is; it isn't something we forget. Dar's singing is haunting. My only depression associated with winter is having to shovel the damn snow that the town authorities shove in front of my house to clear the street.

Christians And Pagans is another cute story, making a point about religious tolerance. Dar's politics aren't as up front as my goddess Ani DiFranco. Tolerance is nice though.

This album has so many of my favorite Dar songs, though all the other albums have gems as well. You can't skip Honesty Room's two gems, When I Was A Boy and The Babysitter's Here.

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