M. Ward Holds Time in Suspension

Hold Time, the seventh solo album from singer/songwriter/producer M. Ward, releases today. The new collection of songs from the Portland resident who creates with the likes of Jim James, Zooey Deschanel, Jenny Lewis, and Cat Power, plays a guessing game with the listener, creating sounds and spaces that span across decades.

Hold Time is a case study for what I hear from most artists today. At the core of most serious songwriters is the desire to create something timeless, a piece that stands alone and begs the question, “When was this created?” Many of these artists point to the wax libraries they grew up with, vinyl contributions that still communicate powerfully amidst the noise of modern culture.   M. Ward might be considered a leader in “the timeless campaign” with a body of work that most recently includes “the 50’s soul-pop collaboration, “She & Him” featuring the vocals of Zooey Deschanel, as well as a knack for blending the new with the old.  His latest installment blends some of the biggest sounds ever heard from M. alongside some of the subtlest, oftentimes juxtaposed against each other within the same song. “Never Had Nobody Like You” (featuring Deschanel) debuts with a Ringo-like cadence coupled with McCartney fuzz. The title track employs Ward’s trademark (boomy, quiet room tones on vocals and guitars) set against huge, lush string arrangements creating a pleasant anomaly.

When it comes to words, M. tells the usual stories of love, heartbreak, and self-realization, a few sticking out like “Jailbird” and “Oh Lonesome Me” featuring a felicitous performance by Lucinda Williams. Ward doesn’t shy away from spirituality on Hold Time but joins a list of growing indie personas (My Morning Jacket comes to mind) that seem to enjoy seeping blatant theological themes into their albums while publicly smirking them off as songs meant to be left up to interpretation.  Tracks like “To Save Me” and “Fisher of Men” possess strong attributes of the Christian God while the teachings of both Jesus and St. Paul are referenced in “Epistemology” and “For Beginners.”

A brilliant storyteller, thoughtful producer, and laudable guitarist with a smooth crooner voice made that much more nostalgic by heavy reverb and raw tracking, M. Ward continues to leave his one-of-a-kind footprint on the music industry. Perhaps not as timely as his last album, Post War, Hold Time still manages to show off M’s creativity and ingenuity for throwing random sounds and stories into the atmosphere, somehow stringing them together to deliver something unique and tangible.

To download the single from Hold Time    from Undiscovered for free, click here.