Laconic California indie minstrel
M. Ward
's fifth offering is a thrift shop photo album filled with histories that may or may not have been, dust bowl carnival rides, and slices of sunlit Western
Americana
so thick that you need a broom to sweep up the bits that fall off of the knife.
Ward
makes records that sound like he just wandered in off the street with a few friends and hit the record button, but what would feel lazy and unfocused in less confident hands comes off like a tutorial in old-school songwriting and performance that hearkens back to the days of
Hank Williams
and
Leadbelly
if they had had access to a modern-day studio.
Post-War
is not only
's best effort yet, it's one of the best records of the year. While his distinctive half-second-delay drawl assumes its usual position as the ghostly broadcast from a more sepia-toned time, the production is far grander than on his previous outings. Opener
"Poison Cup,"
sounding for what it's worth like a cross between
the Walker Brothers
'
"Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"
and an outtake from
Dennis Wilson
's
Pacific Ocean Blue
, kicks things off with sneaky keyboard strings that fade into the real deal, reaching elegiac heights by the diminutive track's end. A catchy cover of
Daniel Johnston
"To Go Home"
features guest vocalist
Neko Case
breathing fire into the choruses with her trademark howl, the rowdy
"Requiem"
sounds like a
Tom Waits
version of
Queen
"Fat Bottomed Girls,"
and the peerless
"Magic Trick,"
with its brilliant refrain of "She's got one magic trick/just one and that's it/she disappears," kicks off a suite of tunes that snake their way through to the album's end like a shot of Apple Jack. Like early
Pavement
,
knows how to make sloppy sound succinct, and it's that magic mix of earnestness and apathy that makes
the secret bounty that it is. ~ James Christopher Monger