“Chinese Translation” [Post-War] (Live On Conan O’Brien Featuring Jim James, Neko Case)

Misguided Blog-Diss-Hype

“My biggest problem with the record is a purely objective one: Ward’s voice grates. It manages to be nasal and raspy and wavering, which proves to be too distracting. Regardless of the timbre of his pipes, Ward does little melodically to encourage. The album never really presents any memorable ideas, and M. Ward sounds exactly as expected. Never a good thing when someone’s never listened to you before.”

1. Duets For Guitar (#1)

While the sound on M. Ward’s ear-bud straining duet with Matt Ward might be classically refined in a manner that only Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, and countless other horrendous high-schoolers with limited tracks in life and in music production capacity can understand 20 minutes after the neighborhood bar closes on a Tuesday in the vicinity of the Washington/Seattle area, you have to take into account Ward’s appreciation for a folk/roots taste that stretches across countless minor chords, a few centuries of Americana, and initial tour dates in the vicinity of his own jangling Solo-cup with a tribe of lazy, weathered, Portland-based homeless are inspired in the right way by 10 dollar whiskey, M’s deceased idols, and music that is seemingly being produced and recorded in a windowless room with Hemingway’s catalogue strewn across the floor. This guy is the man.

2. “Beautiful Car”- Whereas many people who sing lyrics and write music with this much feeling and blue-collar spirit usually turn into beautiful carcasses, Ward’s storytelling is immaculately mature without tainting the idealism of childhood perception while not being too contemporary in his turn of the Millenium music tastes: straying away from the main islands, where Jack Johnson could be found hanging out with Billabong sponsors, pancaking his own banana, and slapping his guitar trying to get something as flaky as the majority of his exclusive fan-base was when this dropped in 6th grade to ensure that Y2K “chilled” as hard as he did and still does.

I was washing antique cars
Working part-time for my dad after school
When I got the go-ahead
To pick a car and spin around the neighbourhood

It was a baby blue fifty-two Roadstar
It was a beautiful car

That was the night I heard of the fighting
And the murder of the schoolmaster’s son
Last year I asked him who he was afraid of
And he answered “everyone”

But did I even flinch a wrist
Should I have tried to undo what had been done
Now, that’s just the way its gotta be
I should never have to worry myself none

It was a baby blue fifty-two Roadstar
It was a beautiful car

It was a beautiful car
It was a beautiful car…

3. “Fishing Boat Song”- While critical listeners might have been fooled by M. Ward’s eerily creepy propensity towards an aged yet timeliss acoustic-tinge genre that seemingly is fit for listeners of 40’s Churchill WWII addresses to the globe, the songwriter manages an air of refreshing contemporary covers of stories in the bible.

Seeing how the word “ark” is somewhat dated in modern lingo (Gas guzzlers that big are not necessarily that “PC” whatever the origin), he conducts his writing like he is bouncing shit off of his dropped-out-of-school hyper-conservative and Christian redneck buddy on the way to a bait-shop drunk.

Lyrics:

From Springfield, Mass. to Concord Town,
I saw those lights go down,
In a gorge in Kansas,
I met my Jesus,
He laid me down and he said,

If I build you a fishing boat,
Would you leave everyone you know?
If I build you a fishing boat,
Would you leave everyone you know?

Would you be more likely to kill more time with me?
And then a sudden gale began to wail,
It set my heart like no other love,
Like no other love.

From Springfield, Mass. to Concord Town,
I saw my lights go down.