My last visit, also my first, to St Pancras Old Church was for Bartees Strange's solo show late in February. Since then, Strange has spent a very busy summer as the support act for the US leg of Tori Amos's successful In Times of Dragons tour, playing a huge range of venues, including Red Rocks.
I didn't know it at the time, sitting in what I can now only think of as a state of blissful ignorance at Strange's show, but something was happening that night that shattered life as I knew it: the worst, most shocking loss I've ever experienced, the kind of brutal turning point that it isn't possible to fully get back from.
In trying to find some semblance of meaning or hope in these intervening months - still trying, usually failing - one of the constants has been music. And one of the artists whose music has been most constant has been Dar Williams.
I've loved Williams' work for over 15 years and consider her by far one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the world. She's a consummate folk storyteller who brings so much care, detail, wit, honesty, intelligence, surprise and quiet subversiveness to her music.
In Williams' writing, a line or even a word can reverberate over what you've just heard and turn a song lacerating or redemptive in a moment. Her music is always hospitable, never forbidding, but it rewards close attention - it rarely does the obvious, and you'll get more out of it the closer attention you pay. I guess it's all about what one of my favourite songs of hers, "The Blessings," calls "the gift of what you notice more."
Despite Williams' status as one of my all-time favourite artists, I hadn't had the chance to see her live until last week, when she played St. Pancras Old Church, with Heather Maloney as support, the first of two London dates that ended the UK leg of her European tour. It was an overwhelming experience in many ways. To sit again in that venue and hear Williams sing songs that have been beacons for me over the past months - including the one that I ended my tribute to my much-missed friend with - was as painful as it was precious - a full circle moment that I wish I hadn't had to live through, yet that I'm also profoundly grateful for. Paradoxes, complexities, pain and healing...the stuff of Williams' music.
As Williams mentioned during the show, she hasn't toured the UK for two albums: 2021's I'll Meet You Here and this year's equally wonderful Hummingbird Highway. If you've kept up with her work over those years, then what she performed on Wednesday night was nothing short of a dream set-list, encompassing both earliest and newest material. She opened with "Fishing in the Morning" from The Green World and - cough-drop popped in to soothe the remnants of a virus picked up into Dublin - moved elegantly into the beloved "The Babysitter's Here" and through newest masterpieces like "Sacred Mountain," "Magical Thinking" - that beautiful report from what she called her internal battle between "optimism and delusion" - and "Little Town," which, with lived detail and without didacticism, documents a narrator's gradual change in perception about the presence of migrants in their community. Place has always been important to Williams - so much so that she wrote a book about it What I Found in a Thousand Towns - and few songwriters evoke its resonances as brilliantly as she does.
Though there's less quirky humour to Williams's studio work these days, live it's still there in spades. The magical "Hummingbird Highway" - a child's welcoming home of her ambivalent travelling parent - was prefaced by a hilarious intro, and so was the "The Ocean", although the rendition of the song that followed came out particularly fierce. "The Christians and the Pagans" created a joyous communal moment, while "After All," her sublime song about coming through depression by, among other things, engaging with her family's history, was performed following an audience member request.
After Heather Maloney returned for a heartwarming singalong on "Iowa (Travelling III)," Williams ended by looking back again with"February" and "When I Was a Boy," songs whose details still feel startlingly poignant and fresh.
Maloney herself opened the evening with the best kind of supporting set - both distinctive and complementary - her powerful, percussive acoustic guitar-work and supple vocals soaring through finely wrought songs also dealing with memory and place, loss and grief: "Let Me Stay" and "All in Your Name" were among the highlights. Williams joined her for a beautiful duet on "Woodstock" that further collapsed the decades. Maloney mentioned that she's "planting seeds" to return to tour in the UK soon; here's hoping, as she's an excellent and compelling artist.
Williams also warmly recalled her "amazing" first time in England in 1995 touring with Joan Baez, whom she paid tribute to as a great friend and mentor. 30 years on, the experience of Williams live remains an amazing one, and seeing her now step into that mentor Ohio role speaks to the deep roots and connections of the contemporary folk tradition.
Before attending the show, I stopped off at the music section of Foyles bookstore. There you won't find any publications on Williams' profound music - or her own brilliant How to a Write a Song That Matters - in stock, but I did see several books dedicated to the artistry of Kylie Minogue.
At such moments it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of the culture. The songs that matter most may seldom get the attention they deserve these days. But their reach and life is long and they still find their way to those who need them. And the fact that artists like Williams and Maloney are out there doing it, making music that can connect so deeply and truly, remains a reason to keep going, after all.
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