A Wasteland Companion by M. Ward is a transportative collection of songs (I say this not just because I have listened to this album every morning for the last month on my train ride into the city) geared to move you into a dreamscape of yearning and possibilities. Whether or not the album's title is a nod to the Eliot poem, it is hard to say, or if the wasteland referred to is more of a Edward Hopper painting in song. Which is not to say that these songs are a down slide of melancholy since they are not. Most are actually upbeat in outlook, such as the fifth song "I Get Ideas" or the bouncy "Primitive Girl" who sets the singer free (even though it does end end with a subdued posit on "a dawn that never comes").
M. Ward is at his best though with the songs that do seem to tread in the ethereal fog of a cruel April twilight, such as "Me & My Shadow", "The First I Ran Away" with its "faces in the trees…voices in the storm", or the cowboy noirish late night TV ode in the voice of Billy R. Burroughs (a TV editor related to William S. Burroughs?) "Watch the Snow" or the delicate acoustic threads of "continental divide" in "There's a Key". Throughout almost all the album there is the the richness of M. Ward's voice which hovers somewhere in proximity to a more melodious, less scruffed Tom Waits (as the nearest comparison) imparting lyrics that are full of rich imagery of desire, joy, and loss. But one of the treats of this album "Sweetheart" is a bit of an anomaly, a country tinted rocker featuring his She & Him band mate Zooey Deschanel. But that anomaly is the compressed version of what is so good about this album, in that, A Wasteland Companion is full of surprises and playfully, if earth-worn, pulls you along a whole range of sounds and emotions without sounding like the effort is calculated or anything other than natural progression, a collection of songs fit for anytime from a rainy fogged-in morning of early spring or a hot summer evening on the wide front porch to the quilted nests of a snowbound winter.
A Wasteland Companion by M. Ward is out now from Merge Records.
A digital download was provided for review.
