M. Ward - Migration Stories (White Vinyl) - VINYL LP

It was in winter 18/19 - I flew to Montreal to meet with Tim Kingsbury, Richard Reed Parry, Craig Silvey and Teddy Impakt at Le Studio Du Arcade Fire. It was a fine time with a dream team in a city I love. Winter in beautiful Quebec. Les semaines les plus froides de ma vie. I had a bunch of demos that were inspired by migration stories I had heard from friends or read in newspapers while on tour in Europe and North America. I remember being struck by the similarities of the stories I heard from both continents and how really only the names of the powerful and the powerless had changed - thinking, Is this the future? Is this our future?InchSome time went by, the stories wove together and I remember them now closer to characters in a dream of how people could treat each other than any kind of front-page news realism. I think music subconsciously - whether writing or listening - is a filter for me - helping to process all the bad news into something new to build from - some records to me are like self-fulfilling prophecies - visualizing change to wish something into being - those records inspired this one.Inch - M. Ward Album Tracks 1. Migration of Souls 2. Heaven's Nail and Hammer 3. Coyote Mary's Traveling Show 4. Independent Man 5. Stevens' Snow Man 6. Unreal City 7. Real Silence 8. Along the Santa Fe Trail 9. Chamber Music 10. Torch 11. Rio Drone

Several times, as I listened to M. Ward's Supernatural Thing, I asked myself what year it was. Was it 1952, and was I listening to a track from the Harry Smith Anthology? Was it 1972, and was I eavesdropping on the recording session for After the Gold Rush?No, it's 2023, and M. Ward is one of the special contemporary artists who invite such questions. Ward has clearly mastered the whole vocabulary of American popular music and made serious decisions about how to employ it for his own ends. What Ward shares with Harry Smith's artists and Neil Young is a context of musical and human values authenticity and intimacy. Supernatural Thing's original songs sound freshly pulled from the ground, with a little earth sticking to them. Ward's lyric delivery has that slight rawness the ear loves, and his voice has quiet dignity and great tenderness. Supernatural Thing is an open-hearted, inviting album.The album's guest stars - First Aid Kit, Shovels & Rope, Scott McMicken, Neko Case, Jim James, others - enliven the album with surprises. On Too Young to Die,Inch the women's voices in First Aid Kit spread a light frosting over the melody, and their Beach Boys-like chorus on InchEngine 5Inch makes the song sound like an instant hit. Eight of the album's ten songs are Ward originals. There's an unusual Bowie choice, InchI Can't Give Everything AwayInch from Blackstar, and a live rendition of Daniel Johnston's InchStory of an Artist.Inch-By James CushingBoth as a solo artist and as one-half of She & Him, M. Ward became one of the defining voices of the American indie landscape in the 2000s, earning fans and critical acclaim for his distinctive brand of breezy West Coast Americana which pulled from folk, country, blues, pop, and experimental indie rock elements. Ward established himself with warm, analog-minded releases like 2003's Transfiguration of Vincent and 2006's Post-War before

In 2003, everything broke open for Ward with the of Transfiguration of Vincent. Critically lauded and long beloved, Pitchfork hailed it as an album that Inchbroadcasts timelessness and defies genre constraints,Inch and Slant placed it on their list of the best albums of the 2000s. On Transfiguration of Vincent, Ward's elegant fingerpicking, evocative croon, and heartrending lyricism came into full bloom, casting a spell so powerful that even a song as universal as David Bowie's InchLet's DanceInch felt not only new but irrevocably his. One of the most cherished albums in the Merge catalog, Transfiguration of Vincent is both a great place to begin your love affair with M. Ward and a deep, stunningly realized work that listeners have returned to over and over again for 20 years. Album Tracks 1. Transfiguration No. 1 2. Vincent O'Brien 3. Sad, Sad Song 4. Undertaker 5. Duet for Guitars No. 3 6. Outta My Head 7. Involuntary 8. Helicopter 9. Poor Boy, Minor Key 10. Fool Says 11. Get to the Table on Time 12. A Voice at the End of the Line 13. Dead Man 14. Let's Dance 15. Transfiguration No. 2