M. Ward’s sixth record, Hold Time, received a bump in attention after last year’s collaboration with the actress Zooey Deschanel. They billed themselves as She & Him, and their record, Volume One, sold about 120,000 copies, a hit for an indie label like Merge.
Hold Time is, so far, my favorite record of 2009. It hangs together better than his previous record, 2006’s Post-War. NPR streamed Hold Time before its release and it was heard more than 100,000 times. The title track is a meditation on capturing experience or arresting a moment through song.
Ward sings, “You were beyond comprehension tonight/ But I understood, I understood/ If only I could hold time.” He realizes, though, he can hold time by writing a song about it. “I wrote this song just to remember/ the endless, endless summer in your life.”
Ward is an artist who appears to have been born with a particular aesthetic quality to share, and the idea of “holding time” works as symbol or summary of his old-fashioned look and sound. From the music to the cover art, each of his records share it. His music looks backward toward songs that have proven indispensable over time. In concert over the past five years I’ve heard him cover, among others, Howlin’ Wolf, Nina Simone and Chuck Berry.
Hold Time features a few covers, my favorite being Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.” Ward arranges a lush, Brian Wilson-like instrumentation for Holly’s rocker, and Deschanel adds backing vocals. The result is a dream-like, clap-along pop song that’s softer and more nourishing than the original.
Ward duets with Lucinda Williams on “Oh Lonesome Me,” the Don Gibson song that Neil Young covered on After the Goldrush. Ward slows the song more than Young, erasing Gibson’s ironic up-tempo. The result is a brave ode to isolation, though it isn’t as surprising or haunting as Ward’s cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” on 2003’s Transfiguration of Vincent. I saw Ward perform “Oh Lonesome Me” solo last month at Philadelphia’s Trocodero and decided I prefer the song without Williams’ vocals.
A few tracks display what might be called Ward’s interpretation of glam rock. “Never Had Nobody Like You,” also supplemented with Deschanel’s vocals, begins with stomping drums and features a fuzzy guitar sound. It’s a lot of fun. “Epistemology” serves as one of Ward’s better grooves as he sings, “I learned how to hold on/ From a book of old Psalms/ And if you’re trying to sing an old song/ You’re getting all the words wrong/ Well, you’re just a-following along too closely in the book.”
New listeners will gravitate toward these tracks, but after a few times through Hold Timeyou realize the richness of songs like “For Beginners” and “One Hundred Million Years,” and how they hold together the rest of the album. On the latter track he sings, “Yeah, the lights that shine tonight will burn on when we die/ Oh, my soul, one hundred million years.”
Ward looks toward eternity in these lyrics. It’s hard to place him in the here and now, which gives his songs a timeless quality. He is primarily known as an indie artist, and he’s recorded with My Morning Jacket, Jenny Lewis and Bright Eyes. But he’s also toured and recorded with Nora Jones and Beth Orton. (The steel-string guitarist John Fahey was a major influence on Ward’s guitar style, and his instrumentals are showstoppers.) The more I listen to Ward the less comfortable I am categorizing him. I can’t imagine a generation he wouldn’t appeal to.
Until recently, whenever I saw Ward perform he wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. A hint of mystery lives in his music and his persona. He even withholds his first name (the M in M. Ward stands for Matt). In interviews he’s not forthcoming and his songs eschew the personal for the universal. On Hold Time Ward sings songs about love, death and heaven, taking cues from yesterday’s masters to produce tomorrow’s classics.
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