Transistor Radio may be bookmarked by instrumentals, but M. Ward's cracked, jazzy croon is the true star of all his work. The sixteen tunes here all sound like sketches that became songs on the spot, and we all know the well-crafted illusion of spontaneity is a very difficult thing to pull off repeatedly. His most consistently enjoyable album to date, Transistor offers breezy, smart, poppy music very much in the American folk tradition, from country blues to bleary-eyed bedroom strums. This is the soundtrack to a lazy Sunday when you sleep in, read the Times in bed, cuddle with a friend, then finally leave the house for cheese grits. "I'll Be Yr Bird" sounds like the Fruit Bats collaborating with Vic Chesnutt, while Ward recalls Stew on "Hi Fi," the deadpan lyrics over lazy, lovely sounds: "Why burn your bridges when you can blow your bridges up?" The laudanum-like charms of Ward's music are tough to resist. --Mike McGonigal
Review by James Christopher Monger
Listening to M. Ward's breezy ode to radio's forgotten heydays is a lot like taking in a huge breath of dust-bowl wind -- however, its charms are rooted in the hazy lemonade-sipping of summer rather than the great depression-obsession of the post-O Brother, Where Art Thou? mainstream. Ward's voice is a slap-delayed pastiche of Ron Sexsmith's easygoing croon and Andrew Bird's closed-mouth drawl, and like his front-porch fingerpicking, it's as effortless as it is effective. Transistor Radio begins with a lovely instrumental version of the Pet Sounds classic "You Still Believe in Me," then drops the needle on "One Life Away," a lo-fi shout-out to the radio towers of old that centers around the sly and condemning lines "To all the people in the ground/Listening to the sound of the living people walking up and down the graves/Well one of them is mine/I'm visiting my fraulein/She's only one breath away." Many have used the "fake old 78" approach before, but in Ward's hands it sounds truly genuine, and his falsetto harmonizing is as spooky as the song is sweet. While the rest of Radio plays out like a sequel to 2003's excellent Transfiguration of Vincent, with standout cuts like "Sweethearts On Parade," "Hi-Fi," and "Paul's Song" echoing that record's marvelous title track ("Vincent O'Brien"), there's a subtle optimism at work here that was only hinted at on previous recordings, and by the time he wraps the whole thing up with a gorgeous rendition of J.S. Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier," it's become apparent which fork in the road this eccentric troubadour has chosen, and it's generously dotted with pregnant storm clouds.
M. Ward
Transistor Radio
[Merge; 2005]
Rating: 8.2
It's artists like M. Ward who make me contemplate why I write about music. I get my skin tingling to the acoustic guitars and I'm just thinking "Jesus, is this what it's about?" I'm trying to put the feeling this music gives me into words in an attempt to understand it, to convey how great it is and why, and maybe convince you that it's worth your cash or your bandwidth, and it occurs to me that I'm unsure why I do it-- why I need to do it-- and that, in the end, it's because I'm enjoying this and I want you to enjoy it, too.
Heaven knows you don't build cred or a reputation as a trend-breaker boosting a guy like M. Ward to the rafters with acclaim, because he's not one of those musicians who bothers with belonging to a movement or a trend. He's just going on with that beautifully flawed voice of his (a high, hollow tenor with a fringe of grit) spinning melodies that remind you that, though you're weary of the world, you're not alone. His last record, 2004's magnificent Transfiguration of Vincent is at once sprawling and intimate. It's grown on me like strangling vines in the last year and I can play it anytime around anybody without a worry. This one is just a little tiny bit less perfectly imperfect than that album, but it's still got all the warmth and gentle disorganization of its predecessor-- with a few more oomphy tracks standing in for Tranfiguration's most introspective meditations.
For a study of Ward's songwriting ingenuity, just dive into "Paul's Song" and listen to the way he leads the verse through a countryish backing, steel guitar straddling the line between Nashville and Honolulu. You figure the melody has to go down at the end of the first verse, but instead he takes it higher and draws it out into a totally unexpected, twisting refrain. Forget verse/chorus/verse, though, because it goes where it has to, just like the traveling character in Ward's lyrics, who laments "Seems like everywhere I go the sky is falling/ When I come to town, I ain't gonna' lie to you/well, every town is all the same." It flows so swiftly into the half-time strumming of "Radio Campaign" that they could be parts of a suite; taking in the whole album, it occurs to me that maybe they are.
Transistor Radio, like his other albums, is stuffed with over a dozen short songs that each reflect a different side of the same shape, glistening facets of a rough-cut Americana diamond-- one crafted not simply from folk and bluegrass but also 50s AM radio, the saloon cabaret of studio-era Hollywood, and good old-fashioned indie rock. Closer "Well-Tempered Clavier" extends further afield, a sad, enveloping baroque guitar reverie-- let it be noted that Ward is one helluva guitarist, even if he doesn't often play it up.
By now, I remember exactly why I'm writing about this stuff. Because it's fun to get shamelessly giddy and lose yourself in the attempt to articulate your love for a piece of music, if describing it adequately bears the whiff of futility. Seriously, words will often inadequately describe great music, so let's be direct: Listen to this. You will not regret it.
-Joe Tangari, February 18, 2005
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