Denison Witmer: Philadelphia Songs : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Denison Witmer offers such a beautiful dose of melancholia that you might forget your own sadness after listening to Philadelphia Songs, a set of quiet illustrations of the city and his connection to it. Witmer walks around under the weight of his own aloneness, comforted by the city's familiarity yet haunted by inescapable memories. Like Elliott Smith, Witmer has a gift for publicly opening personal wounds in order to touch the universal nerves of loss and pain. He keeps his lyrics frank and himself vulnerable: "Can you promise me you still love/What you loved when you left? ("Stations"). The compelling instrumentation -- intricate guitar-picking, simple piano lines -- manages to support rather than compete for attention. He boldly braves the elements of the human condition and sometimes, as on the haunting "Saint Cecilia," even offers a thread of hope: "Without you it's hard to be optimistic and happy/But it's the only thing/Life is so worth living."

ROBIN AIGNER
(December 17, 2002)