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Album Details

• Artist: M Ward
• Album: Transistor Radio
• Label: Merge
• Year of Release: 2005
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: bbuckingham on 2005-03-09

Timeless - a word that shouldn't be used lightly when describing an artist. But it fits M. Ward just fine. On Transistor Radio, Ward's fourth solo album, he continues to defy easy categorization, although many continue to try.

While critics use terms like "old-time music" and "the blues" to describe M.Ward, he simply describes his output as "guitar music." And while dazzling fingerpicking and lead guitar parts are at the foundation of a majority of Ward's songs, it's his command of melody and his ability to twist convention that makes his records so immediate and inviting.

Transistor Radio refines and enhances themes found on 2003's "Transfiguration of Vincent," and 2001's "End Of Amnesia" but with added instrumentation and an array of guests, including My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Howe Gelb and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis.

Ward's absorption of blues, folk, country, 50's and 60's pop, and the classic cool of the greatest singer-songwriters (Dylan, Lennon & McCartney, Willie Nelson,) has served him well. Over the course of his career, he's developed his own language and concept of sound/space. His songs are transmissions, wafting through the ether from the past, accumulating texture and mood from a thousand smokey bars and backporches, through dark cities and down country roads.

The warm intimacy of Transistor Radio hints at a vastness just underneath the surface - a reconfigured world where classic sounds provoke new meaning and project new forms. And M. Ward is the translator.

Listen and get lost.

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