Promised Land (Dar Williams album)

Last updated
Promised Land
Promised Land Dar Williams.jpg
Studio album by Dar Williams
Released September 9, 2008 (2008-09-09)
Genre Folk
Label Razor & Tie
Producer Brad Wood
Dar Williams chronology
My Better Self
(2005)
Promised Land
(2008)
In the Time of Gods
(2012)

Promised Land is the seventh album by Dar Williams released September 9, 2008 on Razor & Tie, the label that has released almost all of her albums. It was her first studio album in three years.

Dar Williams American singer-songwriter

Dorothy Snowden "Dar" Williams is an American singer-songwriter specializing in pop folk. Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker has described Williams as "one of America’s very best singer-songwriters."

Razor & Tie is an American entertainment company that consists of a record label and a music publishing company. It was established in 1990 by Craig Balsam and Cliff Chenfeld. Based in New York City, Razor & Tie releases are distributed by Universal Music Group.

<i>My Better Self</i> 2005 studio album by Dar Williams

My Better Self is the sixth album by singer/songwriter Dar Williams. It was released on September 13, 2005 by Razor & Tie.

Contents

Track listing

All songs are written by Dar Williams if not noted otherwise.

  1. "It's Alright" – 3:27
  2. "Book of Love" (Dar Williams, Lara Meyerratken) – 3:34
  3. "The Easy Way" – 3:31
  4. "The Tide Falls Away" (Dar Williams, Gary Louris) – 2:46
  5. "Buzzer" – 2:57
  6. "The Business of Things" – 2:31
  7. "You Are Everyone" – 4:30
  8. "Go to the Woods" – 2:54
  9. "Holly Tree" – 4:13
  10. "Troubled Times" (Adam Schlesinger, Chris Collingwood) – 3:34
  11. "Midnight Radio" (Stephen Trask) – 4:27
  12. "Summerday" (Dar Williams, Rob Hyman) – 3:22

The song "Buzzer" was inspired by the Milgram experiment; "Midnight Radio" is a cover of a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch , written by a friend of hers from college. [1] "Troubled Times" is a cover of a Fountains of Wayne song from that band's 1999 album Utopia Parkway .

Milgram experiment series of social psychology experiments, studying obedience to authority figures

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

Cover version later version of a song already established with a different earlier performer

In popular music, a cover version, cover song, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by someone other than the original artist or composer of a previously recorded, commercially released song.

<i>Hedwig and the Angry Inch</i> (musical) 1998 rock musical

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and a book by John Cameron Mitchell. The musical follows Hedwig Robinson, a genderqueer East German singer of a fictional rock and roll band. The story draws on Mitchell's life as the son of a U.S. Army Major General who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was Mitchell's family babysitter and moonlighted as a prostitute at her trailer park home in Junction City, Kansas. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock style of David Bowie, as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk performers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [2]
Paste 75/100(commendable) [3]
PopMatters Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [4]

Slant Magazine called Promised Land "perhaps her strongest start-to-finish album since 1996's Mortal City . [5] A review from The Washington Post said the album "lacks any musical growth" though a "newcomer to her music might appreciate the tunes." [6]

Slant Magazine is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.

<i>Mortal City</i> 1996 studio album by Dar Williams

Mortal City is Dar Williams' second album, released in January 1996 by Razor & Tie.

<i>The Washington Post</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post is a major American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., with a particular emphasis on national politics and the federal government. It has the largest circulation in the Washington metropolitan area. Its slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" began appearing on its masthead in 2017. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

The album entered the Billboard 200 album chart at #95, making it the highest charting album of her career. [7]

The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a recording act will be remembered by its "number ones", those of their albums that outperformed all others during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 in May 1967, and acquired its present title in March 1992. Its previous names include the Billboard Top LPs (1961–72), Billboard Top LPs & Tape (1972–84), Billboard Top 200 Albums (1984–85) and Billboard Top Pop Albums.

The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in Billboard magazine. Billboard biz, the online extension of the Billboard charts, provides additional weekly charts. There are also Year End charts. The charts may be dedicated to specific genre such as R&B, country or rock, or they may cover all genres. The charts can be ranked according to sales, streams or airplay, and for main song charts such as the Hot 100 song chart, all three pools of data are used to compile the charts. For the Billboard 200 album chart, streams and track sales are included in addition to album sales.

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References

  1. Dar Williams: Time, Tides And Empty Spaces, from the website of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday
  2. Allmusic review
  3. Paste 75/100 review
  4. PopMatters review
  5. Review of Promised Land from Slant Magazine
  6. Review of Promised Land from The Washington Post
  7. ...Dar Williams Enters Top 100 with Highest Charting Album, a September 2008 Razor & Tie press release