(2020) M. Ward - Think of Spring


Review:
Prolific songwriter M. Ward’s Think of Spring is a collection of songs originally recorded by Billie Holiday – a muse to Ward and many others. Although Lady Day’s songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists, chances are that you’ve never heard them rendered this way. M. Ward comments on his approach, “I first heard Lady In Satin in a mega-shopping mall somewhere in San Francisco. I was about 20 years old and didn’t know much about Billie’s records or her life or how her voice changed over the years. Anyway, the sound was coming from the other side of the mall and I remember mistaking her voice for a beautiful perfectly distorted electric guitar – some other-world thing floating there on this strange mournful ocean of strings and I was hooked for life.” Ten years later in 2006 Ward recorded an electric guitar instrumental version of “I’m A Fool To Want You” for his album Post-War. In 2018 he performed a concert in LA. of all the songs from Lady In Satin as a quintet and began preparing guitar arrangements for the recordings compiled on this record – Think of Spring. The title comes from a poem written in 1924 by Jane Brown-Thompson that eventually became “I Get Along Without You Very Well” in 1938 – the first song here. This gentle, lilting album is a totally relaxing listen, somehow devoid of the deep sensual bluesy moods that Holiday can evoke but instead invoking a flowing, other-worldly (to use his term) romanticism. The concept is to filter the songs and strings from Lady In Satin through a single acoustic guitar using various alternate tunings and a minimal amount of textures and studio manipulation. most of the songs were recorded on an analog Tascam four-track. “It still feels good to invent new guitar tunings and use them to help deconstruct old songs,” M. Ward said. “Billie Holiday’s “For Heaven’s Sake” in a modified open B.” Of course several of these songs have been etched in our memories for years. He has released “All the Way” as a single. “You’ve Changed” sounds very different than Billie’s version or this writer’s favorite, Helen Humes’ version, but it still carries that devastating feeling as he repeats the refrain “It’s all over now.” “Violets for Your Furs” has long been a favorite ballad for jazz artists, with Coltrane’s 1958 Prestige version coming to mind. “But Beautiful” is well-covered both instrumentally and vocally, including on Diana Krall’s most recent release. And, of all Ward’s closing version of “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” delivered in practically a whisper, especially tugs hard emotionally. The closest reference point is the equally inventive interpreter Cassandra Wilson’s 2015 tribute Coming Forth by Day but she and Ward are coming at it from two totally different perspectives. As deep as hers is, Ward’s ruminations are in a category unto itself.





Tracklist:
01. I Get Along Without You Very Well
02. For Heaven's Sake
03. It's Easy To Remember
04. You've Changed
05. Violets For Your Furs
06. For All We Know
07. But Beautiful
08. All The Way
09. I'm A Fool To Want You
10. I'll Be Around
11. You Don't Know What Love Is


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits