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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Radio friendly. Matt Ward comes across as a shy, mellow, private kind of person. Despite murmurs of jet lag, it’s obvious when we meet that he’s more concerned with playing music than talking about it. He describes his music simply as “guitar music” because “I don’t have more words to describe it than that”. No bother, it speaks for itself, and watching him play is mesmerising.You see, there’s something ghostly about his sound. It’s singer/songwriting as directed by David Lynch. Everything seems normal but there’s something bizarre going on. An undercurrent of other-worldliness. It’s a bit spooky. The ingredients are simple enough. Home-cooked, country-tinged songs, deft guitar work, the occasional saloon bar piano and a warm, fuzzed-out vocal that sounds permanently like it needs a good rest. The weirdness is in the production, a rich hollowness created strictly with effects pedals and acoustic techniques. And not a laptop in sight. “It’s funny what computers have done,” he offers in his delicate croak. “I don’t like metronomes and I don’t like instruments that have nothing to do with humans. There’s enough inhuman stimuli in the world right now.”  Although now based in Portland (“the best city on the West Coast”), Oregon, he grew up further south in LA, following bands like Sonic Youth and fIREHOSE, as well as countless others he heard on independent radio stations, particularly KCRW. It’s his love for indie radio and his concern for its survival that underlies his fourth album, Transistor Radio. “It’s inspired by the mixed feelings I have about radio. I still believe in the potential of it and have a romantic idea of it. But I’m concerned that radio programmers that play the music they love could be facing extinction because of corporate interests turning radio into a form of advertising.” That independent spirit, along with a deeply personal relationship with music, feels like a cornerstone of M Ward’s outlook, and it comes across in his work. Old-fashioned songs, beautifully played with a personal twist, born of myriad influences heard on the radio. “John Peel was the personification of what I’m talking about.” Amen to that.
Alastair Lee
M Ward – Transistor Radio, released 28 February 05 on Matador Records.
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 the killssession  willy masonsession  kt tunstallsession  roots manuvasession
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