The fifth M. Ward album and his most absorbing yet. Its songs unravel their world-wearied tales of life, love, and human kindness with an innate and special grace, helped in part by the very talented friends who join him on this record, such as Neko Case and Mike Mogis, as well as old "Monsters Of Folk" touring buddy Jim James (My Morning Jacket). Look for him on tour this fall.
Review by James Christopher Monger
Laconic California indie minstrel M. Ward's fifth offering is a thrift shop photo album filled with histories that may or may not have been, dust bowl carnival rides, and slices of sunlit Western Americana so thick that you need a broom to sweep up the bits that fall off of the knife. Ward makes records that sound like he just wandered in off the street with a few friends and hit the record button, but what would feel lazy and unfocused in less confident hands comes off like a tutorial in old-school songwriting and performance that hearkens back to the days of Hank Williams and Leadbelly if they had had access to a modern-day studio. Post-War is not only Ward's best effort yet, it's one of the best records of the year. While his distinctive half-second-delay drawl assumes its usual position as the ghostly broadcast from a more sepia-toned time, the production is far grander than on his previous outings. Opener "Poison Cup," sounding for what it's worth like a cross between the Walker Brothers' "Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and an outtake from Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, kicks things off with sneaky keyboard strings that fade into the real deal, reaching elegiac heights by the diminutive track's end. A catchy cover of Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home" features guest vocalist Neko Case breathing fire into the choruses with her trademark howl, the rowdy "Requiem" sounds like a Tom Waits version of Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," and the peerless "Magic Trick," with its brilliant refrain of "She's got one magic trick/just one and that's it/she disappears," kicks off a suite of tunes that snake their way through to the album's end like a shot of Apple Jack. Like early Pavement, Ward knows how to make sloppy sound succinct, and it's that magic mix of earnestness and apathy that makes Post-War the secret bounty that it is.
M. Ward
Post-War
[Merge; 2006]
Rating: 8.2
Boom or ruin. The meaning of "post-war" changes depending on whether or not your side won. The term is likely to keep its basically positive connotation in the U.S. at least until everyone who remembers the late-1940s is dead. I'm unsure what war M. Ward is referring to in the title of his fifth album, or even if he had a specific war in mind, but a time of active war seems like an odd time to consider the sentiment. The reality of human nature also means that every post-war is also a pre-war-- every generation spills blood sooner or later.
The title track sheds a bit of light on where Ward's mind is, and that's to say he's right about where he usually is. Ward's post-war is internal, relational; it's adjusting to new realities, both pleasant and not. Backed with electric piano and shaker-- a sort of slow-motion r&b setting-- Ward's endearingly creaky tenor softly draws the line between then and now: "You say the money just ain't what it used to be/ Man how we used to tear apart this town/ Put a dollar into the machine and you'll remember how." The humidity is so high in the arrangement that I swear my speakers got wet.
That humidity comes and goes on Post-War, Ward's first record with a full-time backing band. Having the band doesn't fundamentally change his approach, but it does boost the immediacy of some of his songs. The overall flow of the album is also much more focused than in the past, with 12 songs and very few transitional scraps and mood pieces. If those little bits of ephemera carried a large part of the charm load on his earlier albums, they're not missed very sorely here-- beautifully realized songs and great musicianship have a way of making up for something like that.
And these are some truly beautiful songs. Live strings spar with mellotron strings on "Poison Cup", a gorgeous and intense love song that begins, "One or two won't do/ 'Cause I want it all...I hope you know what I'm thinkin' of/ I want all of your love." The song leaves Ward's familiar intimacy behind for timpanis and grandeur, but he doesn't shed a drop of emotion in the transition. "Requiem" storms in with raw blues picking, and from there twists Ward's most-visited theme-- loss-- into an unusually triumphant tribute to a man who "stormed with his feet and clapped with his hands/ (And) summoned all of his joy when he laughed." "In war he was a tiger/ And in peace he was a dove" is just one of the dualities Ward gives his character in the kind of obituary anyone would love to have written about him.
Ward nearly equals the shear majesty of My Morning Jacket's "Golden" on "Chinese Translation", which features MMJ's Jim James on backing vocals. The song's "what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart" refrain and acoustic/electric guitar duel hit home like hammers. The cover of Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home", with Neko Case handling the harmonies, is amazing, musically reminiscent of Wilco at their Summerteeth/Yankee Hotel Foxtrot peak. Not everything is so substantial. "Magic Trick" is essentially a quick joke about a girl whose only trick is disappearing, while "Neptune's Net" is a fun but inconsequential surf instrumental (strangely, it doesn't sound out of place).
Changing his approach has rewarded M. Ward pretty handsomely on Post-War. The Transfiguration of Vincent is still my favorite Ward album by a hair, but this one isn't going far from my player for long. Post-War isn't perfect, but it's all the more listenable for that fact.
-Joe Tangari, August 30, 2006
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