M. Ward - A Troubadour's Transfigurations

Trying to sing an old song

A minor, G, D, E. Fingers slide uncertainly over the guitar strings, searching for the next chord. The tousle-haired boy hums along under his breath with the notes: ⟦Q1⟧… Propped up next to the record player, an album with an unmistakable white cover guides his initiation.

Matthew Stephen Ward is fifteen years old. Friends usually just call him by his initial: M. For Christmas he received the entire Beatles songbook, and from that moment he decided to learn guitar by following the lessons of the Fab Four. Day after day, those endlessly repeated chords start to become more and more familiar. And slowly, those melodies begin to turn into other melodies, those songs into other songs: as if by osmosis, something new is born out of memory.

Music is an ancestral voice, weaving through the fibers of the soul like the echo of time immemorial. For Matt Ward it's the memory of the gospel hymns he heard as a child within the walls of a church, the sound of an old radio in the dead of night, the deep timbre of Johnny Cash crackling out of his father's vinyl collection. It's out of that world that his first tentative musical scribbles are born, animated by the still-naive verses suggested by his school literature and poetry classes: armed with the classic four-track recorder, Matt sings under his breath in his bedroom while his parents sleep, careful to pick at the guitar so as not to wake anyone in the house. In the nighttime warmth of California, along the coast of Ventura County — where the Ward family lives — hundreds of song sketches take shape within the walls of his room.

After finishing school, Matt starts working at a clinic, teaching dyslexic children to read. "It was a very rewarding job," he recalls. "You can change people's lives in a way you can actually see, that happens right in front of your eyes." Meanwhile, though, music increasingly muscles its way into his life: with his friend Kyle Field (later the driving force behind Little Wings), he forms a band called Rodriguez, which in the summer of 2000 releases its first — and only — album, Swing Like A Metronome, recorded under the California sun of San Luis Obispo. "We wanted to be fIREHOSE," Ward admits, declaring his love for the nervy rock of former Minutemen man Mike Watt. In truth, the comparison that comes to mind most readily is with the less virulent side of Pavement, or the lo-fi crookedness of Fuck, with its skeletal electric guitars, dry basslines and a voice with an unmistakable slacker attitude. But the duo's country roots aren't hard to spot either, from the wobbling waltz of "Metronome" to the bare-bones cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Loretta," which pays tribute to the band's influences alongside a stripped-down reading of Sonic Youth's "Tom Violence." Producing the record is another friend, a bearded guy with whom Ward spends whole days discussing the Beach Boys: his name is Jason Lytle, leader of the then up-and-coming Grandaddy.

It's thanks to Jason Lytle's intercession that a demo tape of Ward's work ends up in the hands of Howe Gelb, the longtime mastermind and leader of Giant Sand. A few days later, Ward's phone suddenly rings: "We should work together," Gelb proposes, without beating around the bush. "Wow, sure," Ward stammers on the other end of the line. And so, in the fall of 2000, Gelb's label, Ow Om, releases the first record under the name M. Ward, Duet For Guitars #2.

In fact, the recordings date back to 1999: Ward worked on them in Portland, Oregon (which would become his new home), with Adam Selzer of Norfolk & Western lending a hand on mandolin, dulcimer and percussion. The rest of the credit goes to John King, Ward's true mentor and the man behind the artwork for all his albums up to Post-War: the following year, Ward would dedicate "John King's Watercolor Bicycle" to him, included on a compilation released by the Spanish label Acuarela.

Ward is no longer the self-taught guitarist weaned on Lennon and McCartney: his sensibility and technique have sharpened, aided by his passion for virtuosos of the caliber of John Fahey, Chet Atkins and Django Reinhardt. Duet For Guitars #2 thus shows off a delicate, trembling picking style, highlighted above all by the pair of instrumental tracks that give the album its title. But it's still an atmosphere of lopsided lo-fi contours that wraps around the album's brief fragments (to which the 2007 Merge reissue adds three bonus tracks), evoking Mississippi John Hurt-style folk sketches through light, dusty madrigals like "Beautiful Car" or "Who May Be Lazy".

The oblique sense of melody in "Scene From #12" seems to come straight from the pages of early Vic Chesnutt, while the guitar-tip whispers of "Good News" have an altogether Young-like flavor. And it's easy to understand what struck Howe Gelb, listening to the scattered electric jaggedness, à la Giant Sand, of tracks like "Fishing Boat Song" and "Look Me Over," where Ward admits, with a touch of irony, the longings of his heart: ⟦Q2⟧.

Although more than one track doesn't go much beyond a simple sketch, Duet For Guitars #2 sounds like a promising invitation: confirmation comes with the contemporaneous EP Scene From #12, released by the Belgian label 62 Tv, whose three unreleased tracks include a soft ballad destined to end up on the American songwriter's next album. It's called "Carolina," and with its slightly more polished touches it hints at the new horizon taking shape.

A cracked wooden thing

"I let the songs dictate the next step". M. Ward's philosophy is simple: everything starts from an old song learned by heart, which little by little begins to merge with something else, until it unexpectedly takes on a new shape. "It's a bit like building Frankenstein's monster...", Ward reflects with a smile.

To follow up Duet For Guitars #2, Ward went digging through his endless shelf of demos: "I don't write 'albums'. I just gather up my old four-track tapes when it's time to make a record". But this time the adventure takes on a sharper edge, and at the same time a more lucid kind of madness.

The songs on End Of Amnesia, M. Ward's second album, are rooms haunted by ancient ghosts, apparitions blurred like morning mist: the velvety caress of his voice and the embroidery of acoustic guitar dance in a haze of puffing rhythms, gusts of wind, jingles, unforeseen interruptions. "The challenge is staying open to catching the chaos". And the chaos becomes a docile companion, much as it did within the lonely folk implosions of Mark Linkous. Hence the echo of an old gramophone surfacing in the intro of "Bad Dreams", the rumble of a storm smearing distortion over the ending of "From A Pirate Radio Sermon, 1989", while the fragmented rhythms of "Silverline" lead a bluesy ectoplasm into the coils of Califone.

The irresistible gallop of "Flaming Heart", complete with barrelhouse piano in the background, gives way to the bucolic fragrances à la Iron & Wine of tracks like "So Much Water" and "Color Of Water", while "Carolina" manages to turn the wound of a love's end into a dazzling geographic allegory: "I used to feel like California with baby's eyes so blue / Now I feel like Carolina, I split myself in two". Recorded again in Portland with Adam Selzer (who would remain a steady point of reference alongside Ward in later works as well) and released in July 2001 by California's Future Farmers, End Of Amnesia doesn't skip the occasional instrumental digression built on fingerpicking in the Fahey mold. Amid the western flavors of "Seashell Tale", Ward's first fan, Howe Gelb, also turns up on piano, and the pupil doesn't hesitate to pay tribute to him: "I admire his love for what he does, his sense of humor in music and his irreverence toward musical forms". A lesson Ward proves to have absorbed to perfection.

"I wanted to see what would happen if I combined the songs I'd written about dreams and memories", Ward explains about the inspiration behind End Of Amnesia. His dreams are of angels along the banks of the Jordan, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of waking in the arms of a loved one with the whisper of wind through her hair and a seashell held to the ear. His memories are of school days, of old cars and lost loves, of walks across the baseball field with a guitar in hand. The end of amnesia is the road back home: "I'm walking backwards to the place where I come from".

"Uncut" magazine includes a track from End Of Amnesia, "Archangel Tale", in its "Best Of Americana 2001" list. During the tour he undertakes in 2001, Ward also sells a self-produced live album at his shows, Live Music & The Voice Of Strangers. Alongside lively renditions of some of the cornerstones of his early repertoire (from "Beautiful Car" to "Scene From #12"), Ward confirms his talent with a handful of surprising covers: while the reading of Louis Armstrong's "Someday" entrusts its jazzy swing to the piano, the bass-and-guitar backbone of Yo La Tengo's "Saturday" directly recalls Ward's past with Rodriguez. The Lou Reed-esque "Pale Blue Eyes" relocates from the New York underbelly to the horizon of a country sunset, but it's above all the version of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" that stands out (so much so that Ward will include it on his next studio album too): stripping away the original's glitter, the American songwriter digs under the skin to find a soul steeped in fragile melancholy, almost as if it were a lost Will Oldham b-side. The true unreleased tracks remain in the shadows, between the faint harmonica of "E.S.P. (And A Knockout Punch)" and the playful invective of "Famous Dave", a studio outtake from End Of Amnesia tacked onto the end of the live record. But for the new album, Ward has other wonders in store.

Wide world of sorrow

"M. Ward for President!". The one bursting out with this sudden slogan is none other than Conor Oberst, right in the middle of a national TV show during the American presidential campaign... It's no coincidence, since playing "At The Bottom Of Everything" alongside Bright Eyes is none other than good old Matt Ward, his gaze hidden as usual under the brim of his trademark baseball cap. The friendship between Oberst and Ward is nothing new (in 2007 Ward would also appear on "Cassadaga"), but such an explicit endorsement from one of the leading names of early-2000s indie-folk plays like a genuine calling card. To get to know M. Ward, though, his music is more than enough: and the release in March 2003 of his third album, Transfiguration Of Vincent (put out by Merge Records, the label that also boasts acts like Lambchop on its roster), firmly puts his name on the critics' radar, from the 4 out of 5 stars in Mojo and Uncut to Pitchfork's 8.3.

Transfiguration Of Vincent is a fabulous time machine: it erases the distance between past and present, between tradition and the contemporary. Rustic serenades for crickets and cicadas alternate with visions rocked by the ocean breeze; then, the story of "Vincent O'Brien" – who only sings when he's sad, and he's sad all the time – takes on a luminous Wilco-like nostalgia. And the driving blues nursery rhyme of "Sad, Sad Song", populated by mothers and doctors, whales and night birds, seems to emerge with its age-old wisdom from some crevice of the "Anthology Of American Folk Music".

"Old records are my biggest musical influence", Ward states. "As a kid I went to church every Sunday, and I think that music affected me before my memory could even register it". The songs on Transfiguration Of Vincent plunge into that secret stream of reminiscence, to be reborn charged with an ancient spirit. "When I was 5 or 6 years old, gospel music was as familiar to me as if I'd heard it in the womb. A lot of old gospel songs still give me that feeling, which is older than time itself and part of a universal subconscious".

"How you're dealing with the loss?", Ward asks the listener directly in the album's liner notes. "This record was designed to keep the loss alive & behind me". The heart of Transfiguration Of Vincent is deeply tied to loss: the emptiness of love, the death of friends. And yet there's a placid languor in the sepulchral invocation of "Undertaker", a settled serenity in the eschatological ode of "Dead Man": "When you die it ain't the end", Ward murmurs, "At last, dead man, you are free". One might call it joy, if that weren't the word most foreign to the human vocabulary. "You shall be saved by and by".

The American songwriter's writing is as plain and straightforward as ever, but the simplicity it's woven from is the key to reaching its essence: an intimately mysterious essence. "Religion, time, music – but more than anything their mystery, as inspiration: I love the way all these things are interconnected". The passionate declaration of love in "Fool Says" is right there to prove it: "I thought all the mystery was gone / You're here to tell me I was wrong".

The edges soften, the pace grows fuller. Joining Ward is a folk group originally from California like him, Mike Coykendall's Old Joe Clarks, in whose Portland attic the record comes to life. For the jazzy enchantments of "Poor Boy, Minor Key", Gelb and Selzer return, joined by Kate Simer's backing vocals. The quick arpeggio of "Duet For Guitars #3" borrows the guitar of Elliot Smith, while the tight, wooden rhythm of "Helicopter" bears the Sun Records stamp, with Ward dreaming of clinging to a helicopter's rope to flee into the sunset light from a heartless city.

M. Ward's name starts circulating more and more in alternative circles, helped along by the inspired touch of the "Let's Dance" cover included on Transfiguration Of Vincent. Ward tours with Cat Power, who will often play his "Sad, Sad Song" live, and takes part in the "Vote For Change" kermesse, the tour in support of John Kerry's presidential bid led by Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M.. After scattering a few unreleased tracks across Merge-branded compilations (the tender "Fearless" and "One More Goodbye"), Ward pays tribute to Daniel Johnston by taking part in the tribute album "Discovered Covered – The Late Great Daniel Johnston" with a dreamy rendition of "Story Of An Artist".

Radio campaign

If Brian Wilson had been born on a ranch and Johann Sebastian Bach had been a folksinger, they surely would have been friends with M. Ward. Because that dusty, rustic overture that opens the American songwriter's fourth album, titled "You Still Believe In Me", is nothing other than a cover of the identically-titled pop minuet from "Pet Sounds", while the closing "Well-Tempered Clavier" even transforms the Baroque genius's harpsichord into an elaborate bit of fingerpicking...

Between the two instrumental tracks that, as tradition dictates, bookend the album as prologue and epilogue, there's room for over a dozen brief acoustic fragments dedicated - as the title Transistor Radio itself suggests - to the lost epic of old radios. "I have a romantic vision of how songs sounded on the radio when I was younger," Ward admits. "There was a kind of immediacy and intimacy you can hear in Robert Johnson's recordings." A collection of yellowed newspaper clippings that nonetheless feel more relevant than ever, and which, at the dawn of 2004 (when the album hit stores), tempted critics to toss Ward's name into the then-dominant "pre-war folk" cauldron.

But while tracks like "One Life Away" (addressed "to all the people underground listening to the sound of the living walking up and down beside the graves") seem to emerge straight from Devendra Banhart's attic, on the whole Transistor Radio draws closer than ever to the shadowy romanticism of Townes Van Zandt and the reflective country of Gram Parsons, from the pedal steel of "Paul's Song" to the George Harrison tribute "Here Comes The Sun Again": it's a Neil Young under the harvest moon, a Dylan softened by the Nashville landscape, capable of launching into the drunken piano boogie of "Big Boat," with Vic Chesnutt and Jenny Lewis on backing vocals, before returning to the lilting, melancholy cowboy gait of "Fuel For Fire".

The ever-lengthening list of guests passing through the Portland studios to contribute to Transistor Radio is the clearest confirmation of Ward's newfound visibility: alongside the Old Joe Clarks and his usual partners in crime, there's also John Parish, Rachel Blumberg of the Decemberists, and Jim James of My Morning Jacket (a favor Ward would return the following year by appearing on the Kentucky band's best-known album, "Z").

While confirming the talent of one of modern Americana's most delicate interpreters, Transistor Radio nonetheless slips toward less oblique roots stylings than before, landing a notch below the brilliance of the preceding Transfiguration Of Vincent. The passion for reinterpreting other people's songs has by now become a constant in Ward's discography: this time it's the Carter Family's "Oh Take Me Back," rippled with saloon dust, and another raid on Louis Armstrong's repertoire with "Sweethearts On Parade," which pushes forward over a blurred backdrop of distortion, reverb and synthetic hiss.

Transistor Radio unfolds between the spirit of the road and the longing for home: "My heart is always on the line," Ward proclaims in "Fuel For Fire," "I've travelled all kinds of places / The song is always the same". "Every town is all the same," he insists in "Paul's Song," "Brother, you know you're gonna get burned / If you don't know where your love is at".

Amid the dark dances of "Deep Dark Well" and "Four Hours In Washington", the peak of Transistor Radio arrives unexpectedly from the past: it's "I'll Be Yr Bird", a song dating all the way back to Ward's debut, whose bare-bones arrangement and melodic sensitivity bring the circle to a perfect close.

In 2006, Ward put together a tribute to the master John Fahey, "I Am The Resurrection", enlisting names of the caliber of Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart and Calexico. Ward naturally takes part in the tribute himself, with his version of "Bean Vine Blues #2". Collaborations multiply from there, from his work with Beth Orton on "Comfort Of Strangers" (on which Ward co-writes the title track) to his work with Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley on her album alongside the Watson Twins, "Rabbit Fur Coat", which features a playful cover of the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care". And speaking of covers, Ward has a couple of real gems in store: a romantic rendition of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open The Door" for the "Sweetheart" compilation, and a stark take on Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Green River", offered in support of the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps.

How can a man like me remain in the light?

The war left behind. Post-War. An inner postwar period, a dimension in which the hope of a new day is stronger than the dust of the rubble. In the permanent wait for a love capable of rebuilding the face of the self, scarred by the long siege of invisible enemies.

M. Ward's fifth album, released in the summer of 2006, lives off that breath of hope. The American songwriter doesn't hesitate to proudly call it his first "band record": and indeed, Post-War shows a greater completeness than the previous chapters of his discography.

Having signed to 4AD for Europe, M. Ward got to work together with his own touring band, with Mike Mogis (already known for his work with Lullaby For The Working Class and Bright Eyes) at the controls. "While recording the album we were listening to Elmore James and Billie Holiday and trying to imagine how they got certain sounds," Ward recalls. His fine fingerpicking and thin voice are thus clothed in guitars, strings, keyboards and percussion, in a rush of full-bodied rhythms and cinematic orchestrations that, while keeping the spirit of Transfiguration Of Vincent intact, steer clear of the formulaic risks of the preceding Transistor Radio.

The task of unmistakably defining M. Ward's new direction is once again entrusted to a cover: a Daniel Johnston cover, as the perfect indie songwriter's handbook dictates. This time the choice falls on "To Go Home", which trades the skeletal original sketch for a crescendo of percussion, marked out by piano notes and bolstered by the double drumming of Rachel Blumberg and Jordan Hudson of the Thermals. And in the chorus, Ward is joined in duet by the voice of Neko Case, whose soaring harmonies underline the sense of transience and grandeur of existence expressed in the lyrics of the mad Texan genius: “God it’s great to be alive / Takes the skin right off my hide / To think I’ll have to give it up / Someday”.

Jim James returns to join Ward on "Chinese Translation" and on the brief cabaret number "Magic Trick", while the surf interlude of "Neptune's Net" seems to want to evoke childhood memories of California.

The ideal first side of Post-War is a constant succession of enchantments: the title track is a whisper dotted with electric piano that could belong to the most mournful Wilco, "Right In The Head" is an electrified, sharpened "Sad, Sad Song". Over the acoustic chords of "Poison Cup" spreads the powdered sugar of strings, while Ward, to the sound of timpani, brushes against the mysterious bond between love and sacrifice: "If love is a poison cup / Then drink it up".

The gospel march of "Requiem" swells into a tart whirlwind, again sustained by double drums, before giving way to the melancholy aftertaste of the folk fable "Chinese Translation", accompanied by a video suspended in the unreal atmosphere of an ancient Oriental print. And here is Ward crossing oceans and climbing mountains to put to an old sage the questions stirring within his soul: “Che cosa si può fare con i pezzi di un cuore spezzato? / E come può un uomo come me rimanere nella luce? / E se la vita è davvero breve come dicono / allora perché la notte è così lunga / ed il sole è tramontato / ed ha cantato per me questa canzone?”.

Amid songwriterly tenderness and pastoral alt.country flavors, M. Ward seems to want to escape the iron laws of time to find meaning in the conflicts of the present, discovering along the way that breaking from lo-fi aesthetics doesn't necessarily mean giving up one's sincerity. "The most fun part of the process," he reveals, "is transferring the original ideas onto a bigger screen: I try to create a hybrid between the feelings offered by a four-track recorder and those of a big studio production in the vein of "Pet Sounds". M. Ward's "post-war folk" is this wonderfully anachronistic path, charged with the will to find a new beginning even when there seems to be no more room for the novelty of the unexpected.

As an appendix to Post-War, 2007 brings the EP To Go Home, which besides the title track strings together three unreleased tracks destined for completists: "Cosmopolitan Pap" plays with a sprightly country sound, "Human Punching Bag" slides loosely over the piano, but the best moment comes from the pop-flavored rereading of Jimmy Dale Gilmore's "Headed For A Fall". Meanwhile, Ward appears alongside the "soft jazz" queen Norah Jones, duetting on "Sinkin's Soon", included on "Not Too Late". All that's left is the leap to the big screen, which duly arrives with the soundtrack to Ethan Hawke's "The Hottest State" (released in Italian cinemas as "L'amore giovane"), for which Ward performs Jesse Harris's "Crooked Lines".

First stop Jackson, next stop Shangri-La

He understood it right away, from the very first time he heard a demo with her voice: the pairing with Zooey Deschanel wouldn't be a one-off. With the American actress, M. Ward discovers almost by chance that they share the same musical passions on the set of the film "The Go-Getter": called in by director Martin Hynes to contribute to the soundtrack, Ward records a duet with Zooey Deschanel on Richard and Linda Thompson's "When I Get To The Border". And he learns that the actress has a handful of self-penned songs in a drawer just waiting for the right musical setting. The two then decide to record them under the banner of She & Him, and in 2008 the project takes shape with an album emblematically titled "Volume One".

"I was able to focus solely on the instruments and arrangements and on what's behind the voice", says Ward, "it was a very liberating experience for me". What's certain is that "Volume One", named album of the year by "Paste" magazine, contributes more than ever to the rapid growth of Ward's reputation.

And it's precisely from the pop sunniness nurtured in the partnership with Zooey Deschanel, combined with the thickened texture shown on the previous Post-War, that at the start of 2009 Ward sets off again for his new solo album, Hold Time, which partly sacrifices the chiaroscuro in favor of a pastel-toned lightness. A record that immediately presents itself as the most ambitious fresco of the American songwriter's career, precisely because it aims to be his most immediate invitation yet.

"I wanted to try something new production-wise", says Ward, "I wanted to try combining the two kinds of sound I've worked with in recent years: the bigger, richer, more orchestral one and the cheaper, guitar-based one". Thus the acoustic interplay lets itself be wrapped in the grandeur of the orchestrations, giving rise to a sweetly retro pop. And even if the balance of ingredients isn't always ideal, Hold Time has everything it needs to reap the rewards of Ward's newly won status.

Ward's voice softly laps at the songs' supple cadences. The melodies seem made of marzipan, unspooling amid swirls of strings, chiming bells and twangy guitars. Just listen to the way the rolling piano boogie of "To Save Me" gives way to the mirage of Brian Wilson, with swirling backing vocals and keyboards that unmistakably bear the touch of now-former Grandaddy member Jason Lytle; or how Buddy Holly's "Rave On" is transformed into soft country-flavored whipped cream, sweetened by the echo of Zooey Deschanel's voice. A dazzling jukebox taken to excess, which on "Never Had Nobody Like You" even flaunts a rubbery rhythm worthy of late-period Belle & Sebastian (which, mind you, isn't exactly a compliment…), winking ironically even at the Jackson 5: "It's just like ABC/ Life's just like 123".

But Ward certainly doesn't deny his folk soul: here he is again borrowing Johnny Cash's locomotive gait for the evangelical-flavored gallop of "Fisher Of Men", before rereading Don Gibson's classic "Oh Lonesome Me" like a new Neil Young, dueting with the rough rasp of Lucinda Williams.

The lost innocence of genesis hangs like a promise over the delicate prologue of "For Beginners": ⟦Q1⟧. A promise capable of wresting the aridity of daily toil out of nothingness, transfiguring it into the languid invocation of "Jailbird" and the pressing question of "To Save Me".

Under the entry "Epistemology", Ward's dictionary offers its most brilliant definition: the adventure of knowledge has the unexpected simplicity of an encounter. “I wonder what in God’s name did I do to deserve you/ ‘Cause I just rolled and I tumbled, down a long road, I stumbled/ While shooting in the dark as to what’s best/ And finally, I found you/ Without ever learning how to”.

The journey of Hold Time thus ends on notes of pacified wisdom, in which nuances and half-tones once again take center stage. Love, within the cracked folds of "One Hundred Million Years", carries a weight of eternity; death, in the William Blake quotation that inspires the delicate gospel of "Blake's View", is nothing but a door opening. And every yearning dissolves into the cinematic atmospheres that envelop the hazy title track and the instrumental closer that seals the record, a rereading of the Sinatra-penned jazz standard "I'm A Fool To Want You". Along the horizon line, the vision of paradise looms in the distance, out there, beyond the peaks of "Shangri-La": "I cannot wait to see the expression on the face of my sweet Lord".

The lessons that we’ve learned

"It was never a question of how or why, only of when". From the very first moment they shared a stage together, in 2004, it was immediately clear that the meeting of M. Ward, Conor Oberst, Jim James and Mike Mogis would sooner or later lead them to make an album together. The moment arrives in September 2009, when the unprecedented dream team debuts on record under the ironically grandiose name Monsters Of Folk.

The single "Say Please" makes things clear right away: a riot of guitars, harmonies and melodic hooks with which the quartet shows off its mettle, in a kind of reinvention of the Jayhawks updated to the age of Fleet Foxes. Despite the quality of the ingredients, though, the recipe doesn't always achieve the ideal blend: more than in the unexpected black-music accents of the opener "Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)" or in the languid country moves of "The Right Place", the heart of Monsters Of Folk reveals itself above all when lightness prevails, from the sparkling "Whole Lotta Losin'" to the interlocking play of "Baby Boomer".

The first rule of Monsters Of Folk, after all, is simple: no rules. Forget about roles. Everyone plays everything, everyone shares everything. Looseness and fun as the watchwords, then, with a playful spirit worthy of the Traveling Wilburys. Individual contributions dissolve into the collective nature of the fresco, with Mike Mogis's work at the mixing desk giving the whole thing a crisp, full-bodied sound: the songs on the record took shape through a continuous exchange of ideas and instruments, between Bright Eyes' home studio in Omaha and the historic Shangri-La Studios in Malibu. That said, Ward's contribution appears more decisive than the others', gifting the record one of its hazier passages with the dreamlike train ride of "The Sandman, The Brakeman And Me".

Monsters Of Folk's is a journey to the depths of the American soul. A journey that, from the very first lines of the letter to God that opens the record, seems woven through with that sense of transcendence running through the roots of the New World: "Dear God, I'm trying hard to reach you / Dear God, I see your face in all I do". And so the simplest, yet also the most urgent, of human questions makes its way forward: "If your love's still around, why do we suffer?".

The road runs alongside the lost heritage of ancient civilizations ("Temazcal"), the blood-soaked gold of Cortés ("Man Named Truth"), the American dream as it unfolds from the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers all the way to the specter of September 11th ("Baby Boomer"). As it draws to a close, James's voice rises with the same solemnity the Band reserved for the lines of "I Shall Be Released", evoking in "His Master's Voice" the wait for a call capable of giving meaning to that alternation of shadows and revelations that life is made of. Not a mirage, but something you can actually touch, like the solid ground beneath your feet. And the circle closes, returning to the point from which it began: “Dear God, I wish that I could touch you / How strange sometimes I feel I almost do / And then I’m back behind the glass again”.

In March 2010, Ward joins Zooey Deschanel for the second She & Him collection, "Volume Two", which restates the duo's debut formula with ever greater assurance and confidence, though also with a touch more predictability.

"Volume Two" is followed the next year by the Christmas album "A Very She & Him Christmas", in which the arrangements and orchestrations of the earlier records give way to a rarefied atmosphere with an intimately acoustic soul.

Between what we have done and what we’re gonna do

You need company to face the desert: it's a simple, decisive certainty, the kind M. Ward is fond of. And in the wasteland of our present, there's one companion he can't do without: "You just have to look around to find yourself in situations where it seems like nothing is growing," he explains. "Music is your only faithful companion, the one that never leaves you even in the hardest moments. All my songs are about that."

A Wasteland Companion, released three years after its predecessor, comes across more than ever as a travel diary, a creased notebook in which to retrace all the detours of M. Ward's artistic path: the watchful eye of mentor Howe Gelb and the grin of his Monsters Of Folk buddies, acoustic jaggedness and pop glimmer. And of course the voice of Zooey Deschanel, the "her" who helped bring him into the spotlight under the She & Him banner. But on the new album it's Ward's own songwriting that returns to center stage: not so much with the ambition to add something new, as Hold Time had tried to do, but rather with the desire to reconnect with the past, to reaffirm his own identity.

It's the variety of facets, then, that prevails over any unity of narrative, giving rise to a kind of summa of M. Ward's music. It's no coincidence that this is a wandering record, cut in no fewer than eight different studios, from Portland to Bristol, via Los Angeles and New York. The key to A Wasteland Companion lies in the balance of the whole: "I think it's the record with the best balance between light and shade I've ever made." So, on the sunnier side, the piano of the single "Primitive Girl" immediately unrolls its infectious boogie. As a counterweight, the ancient bones of "Me And My Shadow" get smudged with electricity, while "Watch The Show" teleports Giant Sand into the dusty Memphis of Sam Phillips's day. Above all, though, it's Ward's fingerpicking that reclaims the spotlight, sketching delicate watercolors on tracks like "The First Time I Ran Away", accompanied by a video that echoes the fairy-tale atmosphere of "Chinese Translation".

Once again, Ward pays passionate tribute to his idols, starting with the dedication to Big Star on the opening "Clean Slate (For Alex & El Goodo)". On "I Get Ideas" he restores a lively energy to the old tango made famous by Louis Armstrong, before dipping once more into the inexhaustible songbook of Daniel Johnston, as he had already done with "To Go Home" on Post-War: with Zooey Deschanel's help, Ward fits his "Sweetheart" out in the perfect evening gown for the end-of-year dance.

At the same time, the American songwriter draws on all the influences accumulated over years of outstanding collaborations: "Working with Zooey Deschanel inspired me to dig a little deeper into the work of certain girl groups from the Fifties and Sixties and into Phil Spector's production style. Working with Jim James of My Morning Jacket, on the other hand, inspired me to listen more closely to so-called soul or R&B music, people like Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield."

The songs on A Wasteland Companion are woven through with dreams. Take "There's A Key", where Ward draws on his recurring nightmare of being swept away by a storm surge in the ocean to look his fears in the face: "I'm conquering the ocean one wave at the time," he whispers in his silken voice over an arpeggio borrowed from Paul Simon. "Jump inside this tidal wave with me." What matters is who you face the ocean with. Or, as in "The First Time I Ran Away", who you dare the horizon with: "The last time I run away, well I hope it's with you / Will you let me show you where to run?"

Even when the depression seems as deep as the gorges of the Grand Canyon, even when all mystery seems to have vanished, the sun can still filter through the fog, oxygen can fill the lungs again, salvation can arrive caressing the waters of the Rio Grande: the ending of "Pure Joy" sounds like an ode to hope, humble and sure as the truest things are. "Pure joy just to see you again." Even the desert can start to bloom again.

2013 brings the third chapter of the fruitful partnership between Ward and Zooey Deschanel, "Volume 3", in which the two confirm She & Him's now well-established formula with no major surprises, somewhere between Spector-esque girl-pop and doo-wop trinkets. But a sense of déjà vu lurks around the corner, given how closely the new album is tied to the two previous volumes.

This is confirmed the following year by their move to Columbia with "Classics", a covers collection that, rather than playing with allusions, chooses to lay out the couple's list of influences more explicitly than ever. After all, their songs have always had the look of apocryphal covers from another era: "Classics", in the end, is simply the closing of the circle.

I'm going higher someday

 Confirmation or repetition, that is the dilemma. When an artist arrives at a tried-and-tested, recognizable signature style like M. Ward's, temptation lurks around every corner: every new record risks being tagged straight away as the same old record.

More Rain, released in spring 2016, does nothing to settle the doubt. It deliberately stages everything you might expect from an M. Ward album: retro-pop elegance, folk-tinged songwriting and a guest list even richer than in the past. "All my records, in my mind, are like one single, long album," he admits himself. If the previous A Wasteland Companion was already a perfect summary of everything that came before, More Rain sounds, in short, like one more step toward the edge of formula.

The echo of rain that opens the record is the sound of a dreary day under Portland's clouds, when music becomes the only companion capable of bringing back the sun. "Music is the best reaction to bad weather," Ward confirms. And the music of More Rain is a constant attempt to restore clear skies, both in the weather and in life: "Every morning I read the New York Times and it often seems like things just keep getting worse. In my life, music has the ability to channel all that anxiety and negativity."

So it's no surprise that the accents grow sharper right from the T. Rex-like stride of "Time Won't Wait," between the piano's rolling boogie and Neko Case's backing vocals. With the far-from-secondary contribution of Scott McCaughey (standard-bearer of Minus 5 and Young Fresh Fellows, as well as an associate of late-period R.E.M.), an exuberant power-pop streak creeps into tracks like "Confession" and "Temptation," with Peter Buck also popping up armed with his trusty Rickenbacker.

In fact, as Ward explains, More Rain had a rather unusual genesis: "The idea was to experiment with layering the voice, like on doo-wop records... doing all the string, horn and percussion parts using only the voice." Things, however, ended up taking a different, decidedly more conventional direction. But traces of that original inspiration aren't hard to find, from the vocal-harmony interplay of the delicate "Little Baby" to the hazy choral quality of "I'm Listening (Child's Theme)."

It's no coincidence, then, that this time the obligatory cover choice falls on a Beach Boys song ("You're So Good To Me"), sealing Ward's devotion to the vocal interweaving chiselled out by Brian Wilson. The scent of California also lingers amid the psych-folk flecks of "Girl From Conejo Valley," led by Mike Mogis's moog and ready to wink at the past of "Transfiguration Of Vincent" by explicitly referencing the old "Helicopter."

It's above all in "Pirate Dial," though, that the past resurfaces most tangibly, its acoustic weave lightly veiled with keyboards giving rise to one of the finest moments on the record. The clouds part to reveal a patch of blue, and here comes the gospel-pop of "I'm Going Higher" to close the curtain alongside the Secret Sisters, like a sermon announcing the arrival of dawn: “I’m going higher someday/ Although it may not look that way/ Though today they just might break me/ One day he’s gonna take me/ And lift me higher so that I can see the dawn shines beyond my darkest days”.

After more than fifteen years of career, M. Ward's output feels increasingly like a temporal paradox: from the very start, his music has always lived with an old-fashioned spirit, expressing itself now through a crooked acoustic fragility, now through the rounded warmth of an old-school popular vocation. His love of simplicity is nothing less than the most penetrating way to grasp the mysterious fabric of existence: "I'm more interested in the things I don't understand than the things I do," he declares with a smile. "Luckily, there are far more things in my life that I don't understand."

M. Ward delivers yet another record, his tenth as a solo artist, bearing his unmistakable stamp as a modern-yet-classic crooner, both within the so-called indie world – notably as a duo with independent-film icon Zooey Deschanel in the She & Him project – and in dialogue with the history of American songwriting, sinking his warm roots into 1950s ballads, if not straight into the great standards songbook. His real engagement, in fact, is with the history of the American ballad, reshaping a timeless form constantly forged by songwriters like George Gershwin and Burt Bacharach, or Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

Intimate and sighing, quiet and nocturnal, "Migration Stories" is more powerful and precious than its predecessor, built from rarefied, nighttime atmospheres. The album – co-produced for the first time, with Craig Silvey in Montreal at the Arcade Fire studios – consists of eleven ballads devoted to every form of heartache, starting with the splendid "Migration of Souls." 

Nothing particularly new or different from what we've come to expect from M. Ward, but still damn delightful and vibrant in those small, almost imperceptible movements capable of (re)innovating a tradition by slipping beneath the skin of the everyday, and turning every disquiet into something better. 

Less than a year later M Ward re-imagines "Lady In Satin" (Columbia, 1958) by Billie Holiday, the penultimate album released in the lifetime of classic jazz's most intense, aching voice. On Think Of Spring we're left alone with nothing but M Ward's voice and acoustic guitar from the opening "I Get Along Without You Very Well" (from which the album's title is drawn), which dissolve the original band and orchestra, whispering the words straight into our ear. M Ward's music runs on a parallel track, far removed from record-industry logic, establishing a devoted connection with his listeners, along which this deeply personal and coherent re-imagining also flows. The songwriter looks to and measures himself only against the great North American songwriters: Rodgers & Hart, George Gershwin, Burt Bacharach, Chet Baker. M Ward proves equal to an extremely difficult task, pulling it off with remarkable naturalness, as if that music were his own and, perhaps, like the great jazz standards, it's precisely made to belong to everyone and no one in particular.

Ride the wave of great music

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