Anyone who has discovered something at once uncommon and comforting amid the dusty bric-a-brac of a crawl space will appreciate the fact that M. Ward spent a good portion of the last two years crafting Post-War, his fifth album, in a Portland attic.
The man himself, a.k.a. Matt Ward, warrants inclusion among a growing number of indie singer-songwriters whose cozy, old-fashioned pleasures offer soft but crisp contrast to the more lurid indulgences of pop. Some of those contemporaries, including Neko Case and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, make appearances on Post-War. They rightly defer to his voice, a thing of pipe tobacco and county fairgrounds and raw honey. His manner is no more demonstrative than the weathered face of a midwestern grandfather; fractional shifts and careful nuances — the raised volume against the vaudevillian “Magic Trick”, the croon across the gently rippling title track — take on immense meaning.
So do his interactions with the band that accompanied him on tour during most of the album’s gestation. Whether sitting between two drummers (Rachel Blumberg and Jordan Hudson) on the celebratory genuflection of “Requiem” or leaning against Mike Coykendall’s bass for a joyous, ringing cover of Daniel Johnston’s “To Go Home”, Ward echoes the easy soulfulness of Nick Lowe’s recent albums.
In his attic, Ward also discovers a few other treasures. With the warm, bashful smile of a man who likes to share, he dusts them off, makes them shine, and hands them over to the listener.
