 | M. Ward |
I knew virtually nothing about M. Ward before I saw him a couple of weeks ago at the DMA in Dallas. The show turned out to be a solo acoustic affair, but I enjoyed the songs themselves, so I picked up the new album, Hold Time, the next day at lunch. What I got was exactly what I expected – a mix of blues, bluegrass, country, folk and a little old school rock and roll sprinkled throughout. That’s not to say all the songs are a substantially similar mix of those styles; quite the contrary. M. Ward covers a lot of ground on this record, travelling a long road with stops along the way with throwback rock to slow folk to country – a lot of influences are paid tribute and given their own loving new polish. The variety, however, works pretty well and what you get is a thoroughly entertaining album, giving what I’ll call original tributes…even if M. Ward may be a little too wrapped up in the “tribute” part, rather than the “original” part. Hit the jump for the full review.
The real strength of this record is the depth and breadth of styles that M. Ward hits from song to song throughout. One such style which may not really be my cup of tea would be a more 50s style throwback sound, which can be heard most of all in Never Had Nobody Like You and Save Me. Never Had Nobody Like You is a fine song – though not the best on the album by far. The element that seems a little tired in Save Me is the Jerry Lewis-esque piano to begin the song (and throughout). It evokes a little too much of the diner dance sequence from Pulp Fiction, but the rest of the song definitely counteracts this feeling and what comes out is an overall solid track with surprisingly complexity which belies its almost irritatingly simplistic intro.
Hold Time’s more folksey songs are definitely One Hundred Million Years and Shangri-La. OHMY is a deceptively quick yet thoroughly relaxing bluegrass type track which uses hand strummed acoustic guitar to relax its way through the short two plus minutes. M. Ward’s delicate, scratched record quality voice recordings on One Hundred Million Years and Shangri-La really have an impromptu show around the campfire with friends type feel to it rather than a bigtime album. However, the one song where Mr. Ward flexes his range muscles the most has to be on Fisher of Men. The driving strum of the guitar and the country lead guitar with the toom-toom-toom-toom bassline sounds just a mere voice away from an honest to god Johnny Cash song than sounding like it was written sometime in the last couple of years. Honestly, I had to look up the song to verify that it was an original because I was so convinced it was a cover.
I’d like to call special attention to the one true standout on this record, Oh Lonesome Me. This is far and away the finest song on the album, with its gorgeous strings and keyboard fills in the background over the easy strummed guitar, paired with the double, synched slide guitar over exceptionally soulful vocal performances by Ward and Lucinda Williams. The problem with this song is that it was written in 1958 – which fits in extremely nicely with the overall tone of the album – but a bit disappointing because it really is the biggest home run on the album. Cover or not, this track shines.
On Hold Time, Ward explores his influences with a real purpose and takes it very seriously, even telling us that, “If you’re tryin’ to sing an old song, you’re getting all the words wrong – well you’re just following along too closely in the book.” Ward has crafted an album which doesn’t necessarily appear on the surface to have much of an identity other than an old standards or tribute type album, but that could not be farther from the truth. His songs tend to hit the high notes of old styles of music, and he puts his own brand on the top to give something subtly yet appreciably different and original. I just wish it was a little more on the original side.
