Two or three tracks into his seventh LP, it’s plainly obvious: M. Ward is making the same record yet again. Ward fans probably began intuiting this trend after his fourth full-length, 2005’s breakthrough Transistor Radio, but for the first time some of the vintage blues-folk and old-school rock feel … Xeroxed.
Still, we didn’t hold it against Johnny Cash for making country records that sounded like Johnny Cash, and there’s evidence aplenty that Ward can still write the bejesus out of a song. What’s irksome, though, is wondering how much creative juice he’s wasting with annoying “it” girl Zooey Deschanel in She & Him (she “adorkables” Ward’s cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Sweetheart” here, too).
So, instead of anything inventive, it’s a parade of Ward’s reliable song motifs and Zen-flavored inquiries — “I Get Ideas,” the chugging rocker that first appeared as End of Amnesia‘s “Flaming Heart” in 2001; the old/new boogie-woogie piano piece (“Primitive Girl” here, “Big Boat” on Transistor Radio); the fuzzy rocker that tilts sinister (“Me and My Shadow” here, “Helicopter” on 2003’s Transfiguration of Vincent), the nostalgic doo-wop of “Sweetheart” (aka “To Save Me” on 2009’s Hold Time).
Some of Ward’s music is starting to read more self-referential than comfortingly retro, in other words. But just when you might write him off, Ward snaps your heart in half with a handful of those quiet, dog-eared love songs that sound as timeless as the rustle of trees. He’s done these before, too, of course — I once saw Transfiguration‘s “Undertaker” reduce many in a Cat’s Cradle crowd to tears. But here, for the first time, they’ve had to rescue his record.
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2012.
