Some musicians write for car stereos; others for laptops, boom boxes or weight-room sound systems. M. Ward writes for beat-up transistor radios, as if he were sending his songs hurtling backward through time and space, to a point where music coexists with a ghostly, almost otherworldly crackle.
With She & Him, Ward plays to rose-colored nostalgia; paired with singer Zooey Deschanel, his work gives timeless pop a thick coat of sugar. But, while Deschanel shows up to shine a few sunbeams on A Wasteland Companion — notably in the appropriately named “Sweetheart” — Ward’s sixth solo album mostly marks his welcome return to the dusty shadows. After three years and three albums for two side projects (lest we forget Monsters of Folk), it’s about time Ward booted the interlopers out of the spotlight for a little while.
Out April 10, A Wasteland Companion opens where other albums might naturally end, basking in a moment of hard-won redemption. In the barren and beautiful “Clean Slate,” Ward ruminates on fresh starts, second chances and earned wisdom: “When I was a younger man, I thought that pain and defeat would last forever,” he sings by way of introduction, adding, “but now I don’t know what it would take to make my heart back down.”
