No doubt about it, M. Ward had a pretty good 2006. But if the wunder-folkie had any epiphanies following last year's breakthrough Post-War, they were probably of a practical nature. As in, Hey, I can actually make a living doing this! Like, a real living! One that pays the bills and everything! Not that Post-War was in any way a sell-out move (whatever that even means anymore). His songs have long been perfect crossover material. They've just been waiting for their Garden State to drag them out of the indie ghetto.
Who knows? It's possible that Norah Jones may yet be his Garden State. Ward sings on the sleepy chanteuse's latest album, and he's been tapped to open up for her on her spring tour. It's probably safe to assume that only a fraction of Jones' vast audience intersects with Ward's, no matter how much NPR love he gets, so the potential to expose his music to a huge new audience looms large.
That's partly what makes this new CD-single such a curious missed opportunity. With the world within his grasp, Ward's released a standard-issue stopgap-- and a brief, belated one at that. Merge is touting "To Go Home" as the first single from Post-War, even though Post-War was released last August, has already garnered rave reviews, found itself on numerous year-end lists, and inspired near-capacity shows on both a full-band tour and a solo tour as well.
So, why wait so long to release what feels like a first step in the promotional chain? Well, at the very least it offers another chance to catch Ward's impressive take on Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home". Ward's raspy voice and keen pop instincts provide him the gift of interpretation, which he's put to good use in the past (it's what allowed his morose cover of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" to escape the novelty tag). Johnston's original lo-fi "To Go Home" was the perfect candidate for a makeover, and Ward's version was one of the highlights of Post-War.
Ward's new cover of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "Headed for a Fall", on the other hand, is a little more complicated. It's a great song, too, similar in tempo and temperament to "To Go Home", but it's also first and foremost a great Jimmie Dale Gilmore song. The Texas singer's inimitable voice is what conveys the song's heartbreak and salvation. But it's one of the more standard rock tracks from Gilmore's majestic and mysterious 1996 album Braver Newer World-- a disc full of worthy, more adventurous songs to cover-- and it leads Ward to play it safe.
All Ward does is lay his less distinctive voice over a backing track that's faithful all the way down to the droning wall of horns and the guitar solo outro, here courtesy Nels Cline. While there's really nothing wrong with the rendition, it lacks the transcendence that Gilmore brought to it. A line like "I'll be waiting here when you hit bottom" sounds oddly hopeful coming from Gilmore. From Ward, with Neko Case and Jim James on distant backing vocals, it sounds colder and a hint more menacing, missing Gilmore's cosmic Zen master ambivalence.
In between the covers are the kinds of outtakes these sorts of releases are designed for. First up is the rollicking "Cosmopolitan Pap", a fun nod to honky tonk that runs just under two minutes long. It's the kind of inconsequential ditty that hardcore types holler out as live requests to prove their dedication. The other new song, "Human Punching Bag", is like its dreamy roadhouse corollary, a ghostly reverb-drenched piano number that sounds like the type of thing the house band would play at the end of the night, while the bartender rinses the glasses and the owner sweeps the broken glass off the floor.
Maybe it's the context, but both songs do indeed sound like B-sides, and taken as a whole, the To Go Home single comes off less like a solid release than it does a commonplace sop that would have worked better as, say, a limited double A-side tour 7-inch. But considering the single arrives so long after Post-War, Ward fans deserved more than a pleasant ex post facto tease. Daniel Johnston? Jimmie Dale Gilmore? Bowie, Townshend, Joanna Newsom? The guy's got an ear for good material, and he's not afraid to share it, so why not go whole hog with a covers EP? Maybe next time.
