M. Ward

Related Content

• Velvet Underground & Nico turns 45 today
  March 12, 2012
• Critic's Choice: Glass Hits plays November 4 at the Larimer Lounge
  November 3, 2011
• Tonight: The Black Angels at the Fox
  May 5, 2011
• JB Townsend of Crystal Stilts on the act's evolution and the influence of Velvet Underground
  May 16, 2011
• Lester Bangs died thirty years ago today
  April 30, 2012

More About

• Matt Ward
• Brian Wilson
• The Velvet Underground
• Folk Music

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Matt Ward has made a career of defying categorization, and this year's Transistor Radio is no exception. At its heart is a love for lo-fi indie pop as well as its progenitors -- third-album-era Velvet Underground, Brian Wilson (whose classic "You Still Believe in Me" gets a baroque instrumental treatment as the album's opener), and others. But there's also plenty of early-twentieth-century Americana, an obvious admiration of folk-pop revivalists and plenty of country-Western influence. Ward is first and foremost a phenomenal acoustic guitar player with a Kottke-esque mastery of the fretboard, but his honest, wide-eyed songwriting and signature gravelly voice add immeasurably to his uniquely entrancing live shows. Ward (above) captures a century's worth of American music like a child with a Mason jar catches a firefly that dances in the soft flickering of its own internal light.