I'm beginning to think that Lawrence KS' Christian Williams is possessed. Everytime I turn around there's another intriguing collection of his work in my mailbox, and I couldn't be happier about it.
"To the Trees" is his fourth full length (not counting "The Long Winter" a collection of B-sides & alt-takes) and lives up to the hight standards set by his previous outings.
When the instrumentation features banjo and washtub bass you have a pretty good idea where Mr Williams is coming from. Unlike many other practitioners of the form it's hard to call his brand of country/folk/americana "dark".
True there are tales of sadness, death and deception, but, like the late, lamented Johnny Cash, Christian Williams does not want us to wallow or revel in the dark side of life. He wants us to listen and learn form the cautionary tales he tells, he wants us to succeed in our attempts at redemption. He is a moral troubadour baring his soul on the vastness of the American prairie.
If this album is dark it's the rich brown of fertile, fecund soil. Williams plants seeds that sprout into brief glimpses of complete tales. "The Recluse Anne Brown" lets us look in on the life of a woman too timid to leave her window and step out into the world she'd rather just watch. We don't need to know everything about Ms. Brown to understand her story and Christian Williams has the skill to tell us just enough to tantalize our imaginations. On the driving "30 Minutes" we are pulled into the narrator's plunging run from demons to the embrace of heaven.
What makes this all work is that there's no irony here. The stories may be edifying and amusing but Mr Williams really wants us to find the good path. On the title track you can hear how he really does want to go out and listen to the birds singing while perched on his arms.
His sincerity is what makes the material work, because it is simple and honest, never forced. It's his way, just like everything else on this album. Christian wrote all the lyrics and music, plays every instrument (aside from the Kristi Henderson's lovely flute playing on "Troubadour"), recorded and mixed the album in his "closet studio" and released the damned thing himself. "To the Trees" is the sound of an artist unfiltered by outside pressures, and is all the stronger for it.
Word has it that Mr. Williams has now signed with Devil's Ruin Records, cheers to him and cheers to the label on such a wise choice.
I do have one teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy complaint about this CD: my lyric sheet is too big to fit nicely in the sleeve.
-Jordn Block
Sepiachord
