:: Track Listing

1. Poison Cup
2. To Go Home [mp3]
3. Right In The Head
4. Post-War
5. Requiem
6. Chinese Translation
7. Eyes On The Prize
8. Magic Trick
9. Neptune’s Net
10. Rollercoaster
11. Today’s Undertaking
12. Afterword / Rag

:: Record Review

M. Ward

Post-War
(Merge; 2006)

Rating: 78%
Combined Rating: 77%


Let’s get academic! If I had to make a thesis, I’d venture to say that Post-War is not a political album, and, in fact, Matt Ward’s never made one. For the most part, his music has always seemed to balk at conceptual breadth, harnessing the mood of his vignettes instead of dissecting the amorphous lives of his everymen. While his lyrics and characters touch gratuitously on “standard” American pastimes like heroism or longing, conjuring up press-happy illusions of true liberal patriotism, Ward’s never fancied himself a rigorous storyteller.

Admittedly, it’s not that simple. I think I can be forgiven; there’s no starving of brimstone in Ward’s arsenal. But, if the songwriter’s concerned with notions of pain or suffering, he can’t cleanly divorce the initial political situations from their ramifications, and it’s not like he’s trying real hard to do so. In retrospect, The Transfiguration of Vincent (2003) seemed to be about death, decay and the aimless misery that accompanies, but “Vincent” was more a taste of gothic dissonance than an actual character. Transistor Radio (2005), while clearly a thematic conceit, was probably concerned with restlessness and nostalgia more than loyal '60s and '70s commercial radio aping. Sure, modern wars serve as fertile backdrops for Post-War, some of his protagonists are soldiers or lovers burdened with sudden loss, but the album’s focus is always pliant, opening into grander meditations on heartbreak, the intractable salt of defeat, or the magic of acceptance. War is “heavy metal bullet[s]” and “heavy metal ways” but these are symbolic cues, never solid images. As a bastion of contemporary Americana, Ward’s on top of his game, framing moral whirlpools in atmosphere, giving into instinctual arrangement choice before ambitious philosophy or labored storytelling. As a proponent of modern political change, on tour with Jim James and Conor Oberst, say, Ward’s vision is weak.

If this all seems too ambiguous, it is. Titular expectations aside, Post-War doesn’t maintain a strong enough narrative thread to deem it thoroughly conceptual, but its timeliness is too overt to discount a unifying concept. Maybe this is the kind of focus Ward’s lacked in the past because indulgence has usually been something of a problem for the guy. Before, he’d absorb his favorite songwriters -- John Fahey, maybe Louis Armstrong, the Beach Boys -- like a man on a mission, turning out records that sagged or broke apart under an abundance of craft. End of Amnesia (2001) shambled, Vincent was too morose. Transistor Radio was bloated with ambition. But this time, Ward’s success is in a palpable balance he’s found, a line to walk between anathema and preciousness.

How does he do it? Where does that balance come from when Post-War’s not a surprising LP, but maybe the best work Ward has ever done, at least more accessible and more technically adept than his career-shining Vincent? Has the man focused his junk? Is this annoying?

First, he got a band to do all the indulging for him. Rachel Blumberg of the Decemberists and the Thermals’ Jordan Hudson run two tracks, “To Go Home” and “Requiem,” on double header drum stitches. The former song’s got a shameless gloss, doped with synthy filler, and Neko Case makes an appropriate appearance, but the latter follows suit and wields punctures of bass where the former’s piano stabs couldn’t. Later, Jim James shrieks behind Ward’s chorus on “Magic Trick.” The song’s all chorus, really, loud and freakin’ jangly, and it’s got an “applause” introduction that throws it over the top, like Michael Bay and a flying motorcycle chase. Even “Today’s Undertaking” plaits thankless toms, bells, and strings into a gooey, thankless climax, but, for all the cameos and chubby predictability, the ending is damn well earned. By trusting the grace of his band, Ward’s found a pace -- somber and dainty, theatrical during moments where lyrics could get cloying -- to his album that fits. Sometimes his lyrics have a case of the jackrabbits, bounding from emotional button to button, but the band is never so stilted or corralled by some bucko bandleader. If I’m right, and sure as shit he’s had a band before, then M. Ward’s become a leader of unparalleled restraint. If it’s all just a coquettish production trick, I’ve been had.

Second, Ward uses those “windy images” I mentioned. He plays with paradigms, like saying, War is on the battlefield, sure, but it’s also on the streets, in the home, in the bedroom, inside the family. In our durn-blast hearts! On the first track he sings, “If love is a poison cup, then drink it up,” with trepidation and a rucksack of dripping strings, convincing himself the worth in something so passionate. Go big or go home, eh? “Chinese Translation” is “Sad, Sad Song’s” beefy younger brother, a dreamy quest in walkie-talkie rhyme. Matt and James ask a wizened old man, “What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?” and are given the song itself, the song of questions as an answer. Unfortunately, with all the reflexive pronouns nibbling at the album’s seams, it gets dangerous digging back too deeply into the album’s façade. I mean… if Post-War’s really attempting to tackle the tribulations of our current geopolitical status, how that directly affects the citizens of a country involved but still ultimately removed from the action, a country where dreams are guaranteed and biceps papier-mâché’d and where the last time we stopped to absorb post-anything was to suckle at the engorged teat of Free Love, Ward’s got a lot of road to take.

Third, the guy’s downright sentimental. His timing is flawless, manufactured and impeccable both. His voice is too hardened and gorgeous to be honest. “Post-War” worships the sound, mimicking his cadence in long wamps of oildrum bass. Everything’s punctual, from “Rollercoaster’s” warm sweetenings of backup vocals to “Requiem’s” crash symbols. All surface, it seems, and that’s alright. Maybe the pleasure bits of M. Ward’s arrangements are more bent on tradition than any sort of forward thinking. He says, “You make a dead man scream,” with so much beautiful swagger that I want to cry and hump him in the same lunge. That’s some pandering dexterity there, but it works. It’s like his fingers have Stockholm’s Syndrome; under his familiar melodies he’s intimidated, but still so much in love. Cuts “Neptune’s Net” and “Rag,” while obligatory, even boring, do nothing to disrupt the excellent flow of Post-War, the steady transcendence into melodrama. And they do nothing much.

If Ward’s a man of greater good, a cross between winking folk lothario and bowtied preacher, he’s bound to end up tripping over some tropes. The man’s still got monkeys to kick, bells, whistles, and cheese to sweat out of his system. Luckily, weightless counter-moments of acoustic shimmy, like “Eyes on the Prize,” just plain white-out and cease to exist. The bigger drama’s what counts. Ward’s bound to get what he’s got coming anyway, when he’s cobbled together a portentous, resigned mood that weighs more than daily lessons about passion and fate. He’s made a honed, handsome piece of work, never too arresting and never too fickle, which is maybe, turns out, as accepting a contemporary political stance as ever. Dom Sinacola :: 28 August 2006 |