The Critical Asshole: Listening to...

2006 was a bad year. 2006 was an awful, no good, terrible year. 2006 was the year that Satan rose from his (or her) layer of destruction and brought torment to me every where I went. I could have done without the whole damn thing. Few good things happened, and the bad things nearly killed me. I suppose it is easy to see why I would have overlooked such a good album, I was too worried about surviving to be able to find any good music. Thanks to my snobby appreciation of the NPR podcast “All Songs Considered” I am honored to be here to present to you M. Ward.

I used to say that California was wasted on Californians. I suppose this is some long held classist belief I have held with me (I also don’t like most Californians). The Golden State however has given us a new Americana folk treasure in the form of Matt Ward, known on his records as M. Ward. Post - War is a brilliant exercise in proving the memory-relationship people unconsciously have with sound; through an analogue and possessive treatment of his recordings (Ward prides himself on having as few people’s hands in the mixing bowl as possible when it comes to the recording and mixing process) Post - War paints a picture of a time when people and the environments that they create were more closely linked than they are today.

In the world of Post - War, young men travel across the sea and are allowed to ask three questions to old men (“Chinese Translation”):

1. What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?
2. How can a man like me remain in the light?
3. If life is really as short as they say say, then why is the night so long?

And this is just a short vignette of the depth that M. Ward searches.

Being Father’s Day, tears gathered in my eyes while listening to “Requiem” and thinking of my own hell-on-wheels father (though I sing no requiems, my father is very much alive, and ornery as old dog). Ward revels: His heart was stronger than a heavy metal bullet/And that’s why I dedicate this song/He was a good man and now he’s gone.

With lyrics, music, and recorded sound so rich as this it is difficult sometimes to get your bearing during the thick of it all. On headphones, Ward’s vocals resonate anywhere from a whisper, to a cackle, to a deeply melancholy and somber moan in a sea of shimmering echo and reverb that sounds more like a concrete floor warehouse in West Texas than a ritzy recording studio in Los Angeles. The guitars both shimmer and buzz ‘round like mosquitos at a lake. This production is wholly perfect, and I am saddened that I could not have heard this sooner.

2006 was a bad year. It was a lonely, hot, desperate year—the beauty of a “period” record like this is that it is so well constructed that it actually links our sense of pathos to those post-war folks that truly know the guts of a bad year. Ward, amazingly enough, has the talent and understands the chemistry behind making these awful and lonely feelings palatable and communicable.

I’ll take 2006 back if I can have this album on vinyl.

Go purchase:

Go purchase the whole damn record—record store, iTunes, Amazon.com, I don’t care…Every tune is good and heartbreaking. Buy the whole damn thing.