M. Ward – A Wasteland Companion (2012)

For a long time now, I've been a fan of modern folk music, usually played by singer-songwriters. M. Ward only made it into my record collection a while ago, when I found this CD of his with just one or two pounds at Fopp in Covent Garden. It's a nice looking cardboard covered CD as well. I was mostly familiar with M. Ward through his role in She & Him and in Monsters of Folk. I had not really listened to his solo stuff that much, but as the price was more than okay, I thought I'd buy this CD. I'm glad I did. This album is a great example of the kind of singer-songwriter folk that I started listening to a lot after having moved to London. I had obviously listened to this kind of music even before, but especially after joining my band Vronsky, modern alt-folk music became my most listened to musical style. M. Ward mixes more traditional acoustic folk songs to more ambitiously produced songs with all the band instruments.



In many parts, this album reminds me of Ed Harcourt's music. There's similar kind of play between acoustic folk songs and more rock-oriented singer-songwriter stuff. M. Ward is an American musician and I feel like you can hear that quite clearly from his music. There are lots of country-influences here and there and the folk is more in the Americana end of the genre.

Ward's co-performer from She & Him, Zooey Deschanel also sings some backing vocals on this album. The sound is a bit more alternative than on She & Him albums though. The music is maybe closer to Monsters of Folk.

Like most of the Portland indie artists, also M. Ward has some great artistic and visually amazing music videos. This animated music video of The First Time I Ran Away is really great. It's a shame that there aren't that many music video channels anymore and even if there are, they are not showing any alternative stuff. All of these great videos just get lost in Youtube. This is why I want to link at least one music video for each of my posts, to pay more attention to those videos and to share the experience with my readers.

I want to mention Crawl After You separately. This song has the best sound of all the songs on this album in my opinion. There's some great and relaxed piano playing along with quiet and laconic singing. Also the melody is quite enchanting. This is the kind of direction I would like to see M. Ward's music to go to.

I feel like M. Ward could be even more interesting than he is. His songs sound great and I do like the general atmosphere on his albums, but I feel like the big hooks are somehow missing. I don't listen to his music that much even if I like it and I feel like I don't remember his songs afterwards. Maybe the song-writing could be a bit more melodic. I like M. Ward's trembling and untrained voice and his picked acoustic guitars a lot. I just feel like there should be a way to get more out of them. It might also just be the fact that I haven't really focused on listening to his albums as a main activity. I listen to so much music as background music only these days that I sometimes forget to just focus on listening itself. Fortunately this project of mine is making me listen to these albums in more detail.

Listen to the album on Spotify.