They say all press is good press, but claims that someone is the "Next Elliott Smith" are disservice to Denison Witmer. His latest, Are You a Dreamer?, is a fine acoustic singer-songwriter album, but it contains nothing that cuts as close to the bone as Smith's more confessional work.
The tracklisting of Witmer's recent covers album, Recovered, better indicates his touchstones: Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, the Band, Big Star... Witmer plays some impossibly gentle country-folk, and Are You a Dreamer? provides more of the same, a far softer and more traditional record than those from Smith or potential points of comparison such as Damien Rice and Sufjan Stevens.
However, Stevens is all over this record, playing banjo, organ, even a recorder ensemble on "Everything But Sleep". He's just one of many contributors to Dreamer, including Don and Karen Peris of the Innocence Mission and James McAllister on percussion, but it still sounds like a Dension Witmer solo record, just more fully realized. I hesitate to call it a collaborative record, because his contributors so keenly serve Witmer's fragile songs.
"Little Flowers" starts as basic singer-songwriter coffeehouse fare before Sufjan's banjo, breathy female backing vocals, and a quaint country beat make it into a memorable, but no less gentle, opener. "Everything But Sleep" features a recorder ensemble played by Stevens that's one of the album's boldest details, and "Ringing of the Bell Tower" matches shuffling drums with Witmer's rustic optimism. The title track makes best use of the contributors, weaving the barest female backing vocals, drums, and clean electric guitar into the song's emotional crests for a lavish but still restrained sound.
"East From West" plucks along without percussion, as does "Castle and Cathedral", a meditation on dreams and photographs. Dreams supposedly drive this album but are only hinted at in its lyrics. It's a uniformly solemn and understated record, and its songs blend together. It's difficult to remember just where one ends and one begins. Partly because Witmer never changes his vocal tone, the songs with the busier arrangements are the ones that stick.
It's the first record for Witmer with any kind of push behind it, and he sounds ready: cannily fleshing out his sound with some help from friends, but never losing sight of the style he's honed for years.
