M. Ward is still pushing out singles from 'A Wasteland Companion,' and the latest, 'Me and My Shadow,' gets video treatment from director Scott Jacobson ('The Daily Show,' 'Bob's Burgers'). The clip stars a Justin Bieber-esque teen star who gets saved from his controlling manager by an adoring fan with braces. It also features a special cameo appearance from none other than Conan O'Brien, whose Team Coco website appropriately debuted it.
With this his seventh studio album, singer-songwriter Matthew Stephen Ward, better known by his stage name M. Ward, continues on a path of starry-eyed myth making in the face of continued maturation and rising indie fame. More a bundle of letters than a cohesive album, 'A Wasteland Companion’ functions in skips and starts, further exploring Ward’s territory of romantic Americana, in the sense of old-fashioned courting as well as nostalgic remembering. Now 38, Ward is making music that is familiar without (yet) being redundant, and tinge of paranoia -- or simply awareness -- has crept in that perhaps was not there before.
It's not uncommon for an artist, even one as original as Feist, to perform a cover or two in an encore. During her sold-out concert at London's Royal Albert Hall on Sunday (March 25), the Canadian indie darling did one better and brought out her opening act, M. Ward, no stranger to male-female vocals through his work with She & Him, to sing the Jesus and Mary Chain's 'Sometimes Always.' The song, a duet with Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, originally appeared on 1994's 'Stoned & Dethroned.'
M. Ward is set to return from a three-year solo hiatus with his new album 'A Wasteland Companion' on April 10, and Merge Records isn't slacking off when it comes to promotion -- just a few weeks after treating us to a video for leadoff single 'The First Time I Ran Away,' they've released the follow-up, 'Primitive Girl.'
