Album Retrospective: M. Ward - Transistor Radio

Album Rating: A-

"The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be,

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page."- 

Wallace Stevens, "The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm"

Album Review: M. Ward: A Wasteland Companion

Album Rating: A-

I used to spend a lot of time wondering why M. Ward was not one of the biggest artists in the world or even in his genre: he makes music that is not only sounds beautiful but is so well crafted that it actually makes you feel like you are living in another time period, he is one of the best storytellers in modern music, and at least a fifth of his recently released songs feature “America’s Sweetheart” Zooey Deschanel.  M. Ward is an artist who makes music that can move you at a million miles per second yet stop you in the middle of your most intimate thought, it is music that is transcendental and time traveling yet somewhat still relevant, it is music that tells us stories yet allows us to create our own stories to the same music, and he has music for every occasion not only in our life but for the life of anyone who came before us.  You would think that a musician who makes music so transcendental and timeless would be one of the biggest artists in the world, but if I walked down the street right now and asked people what “M. Ward” was, they would probably think I was describing one of my 13 medical conditions.  Why do more people not know of the majestic music of Matthew Ward?