Venerable rock critic Robert Christgau's strategy for appraising boxed sets and other retrospectives has always been a sensible one: Start with the end first and work your way backward. The thought is that acts generally don't get better over the course of their career, they get worse, so if the newer stuff tacked on at the end is as good as the older stuff, you're golden.
It's not as simple with indie acts, though. Often the newer stuff is the music people hear first and like most, and the older material is the music people have to later seek out. Yes, there will always be fans that insist the new stuff pales in comparison to the old stuff, but when all it takes is a cheap recorder to document your songs forever, sometimes a little more experience (in life and the studio alike) leads to bigger and better things.
So it's been with Matt Ward, whose artistic and commercial ascent has been consistently upward, and whose musical evolution has largely coincided with his recording budget. Long before he signed to Merge and recorded Transfiguration of Vincent, Transistor Radio, and Post-War, and well before he landed tour slots with pal Norah Jones, M. Ward was just another quiet and modest singer-songwriter aspirant.
Just because the likes of Post-War helped solidify his place on the musical map should not discount Ward's early work, though. In fact, most of the pieces are already in place on Ward's debut Duet for Guitars #2, originally released back in 2000 on Howe Gelb's Ow Om label. If Ward's subsequent albums explored antiquated sounds by way of artifice, Duet for Guitars #2 came about the vibe naturally: it sounds ragged and lo-fi because it is, recorded on a shoe string but not necessarily the worse for it. In fact, the by-default austerity adds a lot to songs like "Good News", "Were You There?" and "Who May Be Lazy", though "Look Me Over" and the too-short "Fishing Boat Song" would have benefited from the clarity a better studio provides.
There are certainly some lo-fi cobwebs draped over "Beautiful Car" and "Not a Gang" as well, but the dusty atmosphere works fine for what Ward is getting at. Elsewhere the two "duet" songs, "Duet for Guitars #2" (which starts the record) and "Duet for Guitars #1" (which ends it) even reveal a bit of the John Fahey fascination that bore strange fruit with Ward's appearance on the Fahey tribute I Am the Resurrection.
Working backwards toward this record, stripping away the tricks and tools Ward has used to polish up his act, is a journey worth taking. If he stopped recording today, the M. Ward boxed set would be as solid as they come, with the beginning sounding like just that-- a beginning-- but the rare beginning that works as well at the end as it does at the start. The folk underpinnings of Duet for Guitars #2 point forward to what Ward most recently achieved with Post-War, just as every moment of Post-War (and each Ward disc in between) looks back to that first album, where he began.
