Blooming Wonder

As evidenced on Sunflower, Smith's brand of songwriting deals, like Wainwright's, with risk--and with the spaces that open between people as a result of it. The narrator on "Perfect Moment" observes that "flowers cover the land/They've been waiting patiently/For the right raindrop to set them free." That line, the one about the right raindrop, speaks volumes about Smith's subtle lyrical sense; luck, goes the old adage, is a combination of preparedness and opportunity.

By contrast, consider the protagonists of "Satellite," who can't seem to risk letting each other go despite being caught in a bad relationship: "You want me/To be caught in your gravity/You pull me in/Then you push away again." Smith's own notes on the song are worth quoting at length: "I've got a couple of friends who've been trying to leave each other for 12 years. They get scared at the last minute and hang in for another year. Neither one can make up their mind. It's so tiring and dramatic. I wrote this out of frustration at one of his silly moves. He once told me it was his favorite song of mine. I don't think he got the joke."

Smith's narrative and poetic sense on Sunflower runs the gamut from the sheer joy of "Perfect Moment" and "New Gospel" to the wry humor of "Satellite" and "After All This Time" ("Throw words like little knives/Treat love like it's a game/Baby we both know how to tell a lie"). The album's guitar-heavy arrangements largely rely on Smith's own consistent acoustic folk-rock sound. But Sunflower will be a surprise to listeners who expect the contemporary folk medium in which he's frequently worked. Shifting time signatures and occasional dabblings in ambient sound reflect Smith's expanding, eclectic musical diet--which, itself, might surprise his fans.

"When I started out, all I knew how to play was country folk, so that's what I wrote," he says plainly. "But over the years the music I listen to has spread out a lot. I began to hear music differently. Part of that process was conscious--I got bored with the stuff that I was doing. I'd hear great music and think, 'Wow, where'd that come from?' So I began to experiment and buy records.

"And some of it came through people who take the time to introduce you to something new. When I was traveling and meeting people, that happened a lot. People can sometimes turn you on to a record you'd never hear otherwise, and it can lead you down a whole new road. That Coldplay record [2000's Parachutes] was unlike anything I'd heard. Radiohead struck me the same way. And lately I've been listening to that album by William Orbit, Pieces in a Modern Style. It's beautiful. So is Sade's new one."

So, for that matter, is Darden Smith's. Sunflower is being lauded widely as his best album since 1988's eponymous release; but whether or not Smith agrees, it's clear that the album is his testament to keeping the faith.

And those sunflowers in his back yard, the ones he thought were weeds? When the dry Texas heat came around, they were the only plants that didn't wilt.

"They seemed like a good talisman for this record," Smith muses in the album notes. "Songs are like weeds. You never know how they'll turn out. In a way, we're all like that, too. At a certain moment we're all a bunch of weeds, then we hit a good streak and it's blossom time."