Release Date: April 10th, 2012
M. Ward is a deceptively hard artist to access. His music is rightly described as authentic retro, with most elevator pitches including something about ‘old-timey radios’ being the preferred listening device with which to hear a record like Post-War. Those records, excellent as they almost all are, carry a sort of weight of preordained values – if you don’t want retro, M. Ward was a pointless listen. If you did, you had to be prepared to deal with retro folk in its purest, least gimmicked approach. If anything, M. Ward is actually one of the more unforgiving musicians with regards to his audience’s commitment to the listen.
Which is why, of course, She & Him was the best possible circumstance for Matthew Ward’s cache. Combining his expectant retro literacy and the brilliant ray of sunshine that is the queen of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl-dom, Zooey Deschanel, Volume 1 and Volume 2 (for we shall not speak of A She & Him Christmas) were an effective distillation of the best parts of both. Neither record were as good as End of Amnesia, but they provided a natural starting point for a fan wanting to dive into the M. Ward songbook.
To that end, A Wasteland Companion, M. Ward’s first solo effort since 2009, might be a great starting point on the journey into his discography. Mostly swathed in warmth, frequently poignant in ways that M. Ward hasn’t been in years, and easily digestible in large or small chunks, Wasteland is a comfortable primer into what makes M. Ward special, apart from his invaluable additions to the She & Him formula.
Coming off of three years of escalating production values and larger sounds, Wasteland welcomes airiness and spatial comfort back into the Ward toolbox. Ward largely shies away from giant pop songs, settling into a groove around the record’s second half that could only come from an artist getting to spend time inside his own head. Opener “Clean Slate” hints at this atmospheric guitar-folk with Iron & Wine like plucking and a gorgeous opening line: “When I was a younger man I thought the pain of defeat would last forever/ But now I don’t know what it would take to make my heart back down.” It’s that kind of well-worn poetry that punctuates Ward’s best songs, and thankfully there’s more of those moments on Wasteland than have been present in any of his past half-decade of work.
The first half of the record is a far more mixed bag. He treads back to the transistor radio style folk-rock for songs like “Primitive Girl, “Sweetheart” and “I Get Ideas,” and his success rate at any of them is scattershot. The songs are that jerky-tough M. Ward songcraft, impossible to chew away on if not in the right mindset. This goes doubly for the somewhat unwelcome intrusion of Ms. Deschanel on “Me and My Shadow” and “Sweetheart,” the later of which sounds just like a She & Him toss off; little comfort for those wanting to hear Ward express himself alone.
Yet again, the second half of the record is far better. Disregarding the unfortunate Network-esque “Watch the Show,” Ward shoos everyone else out of the recording space and gets into his head, leading to some of the more affecting and calming songs of his career. His beaten romantic trope still bears fruit, as the indelibly strong “There’s a Key,” “Crawl After You” and “Wild Goose” impress. She & Him were the perfect songs for being in love with someone, where M. Ward has always been best for loving something that can’t show it back. Each of his lovesick odes twinges of pain; nothing is ever one emotion.
A Wasteland Companion most clearly succeeds in demarcating M. Ward from She & Him. It’s not the strongest M. Ward album, but it’s a comfortable reminder that Ward has not just become the glue guy for more effective supergroups (Monsters of Folk especially). Most of all it welcomes a more open M. Ward, an artist who writes records, quaint symmetry aside, as companions for the lonelier moments in life. Wasteland is just that, and while imperfect, its ticks and flaws are admirable a winning, a quality the best M. Ward record have had in spades.
M. Ward – A Wasteland Companion tracklist:
- “Clean Slate”
- “Primitive Girl”
- “Me and My Shadow”
- “Sweetheart”
- “I Get Ideas”
- “The First Time I Ran Away”
- “A Wasteland Companion”
- “Watch the Show”
- “There’s a Key”
- “Crawl After You”
- “Wild Goose”
- “Pure Joy”
