Favorite Record Review: M. Ward - Hold Time

There are moments each of us carry, that linger on in our memory, long after the time at which they occurred has passed.  These memories replay on a revolving loop in the background of our daily lives;  sometimes being retold and remade, embellished or misremembered, but forever a constant reminder of our overarching narrative.  Played together, these memories are the way in which we see ourselves in the world - the events of our lives from the first person.

Matt Ward's collection of songs off of 2009's "Hold Time" provide the score for these personalized motion pictures.  His songs are familiar and comforting, reminiscent of something we know, but they seem to hover just beyond recall.   Ward's voice is lushly coarse and delivered with layers of genuine tenderness, coating his songs with a thick stroke of emotional residue.  He sounds as if he woke in the middle of the night to sing these songs just for us.   

The album opens with "For Beginners", but kicks off in earnest with "Never Had Nobody Like You" the first of two standout electric tracks; charged by a delicious fuzz, supporting vocals by the female pronoun of Ward's side project She & Him, actress Zooey Deschanel, and a decisive bass drum thump.  Covers of Buddy Holly's "Rave On" (also featuring Deschanel) and Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" (featuring Lucinda Williams) assemble new structures from old architecture and are decidedly original in approach and distinctive in sound.  "Fisher of Men", "To Save Me" and "Epistemology", the second up front electric track, have Ward weaving subtle religious references around jogging bass lines, uplifting choral parts, and aloof cool slide riffs.  A pair of unadorned acoustic tracks, "One Hundred Million Years" and "Blake's View" supply the philosophical mortar to fill the joints the religion he sings of cannot.  

Thoughtful track sequencing allows the album to ebb and flow like a canoe happily taken by the current of the river.  Overall the guitar playing, like Ward's voice, sounds almost lazy at first, but in actuality brims with shy confidence and great skill.  The instrumentation is purposefully applied and always seems to enhance rather than detract from the core of the songs. 

On the title track Ward sings, "You were beyond comprehension tonight, but I understood, now if I could only, hold time....hold time....hold time".  With this album, M. Ward seeks to do the impossible: both pause the moment while present in it to keep it from ending, and physically grasp time as a means of understanding and contextualizing our story within the larger storyline.  While even M. Ward can't keep time from passing, he does manage to be the cinema to let our moments replay.