#288 m. ward – one more goodbye

Just as Leonard Cohen provided a few of his songs to Robert Altman’s 1971 classic McCabe and Mrs Miller, I have always imagined “One More Goodbye” set to snowy scenes from some similarly hallucinatory Western. Matt Ward’s versatility as a willing pop collaborator (working with the likes of Zooey Deschanel and Norah Jones) may have gotten him much deserved attention of late, but it is his emotionally haunted voice and the introspective pull of his own compositions that retain a stronger resonance. Illustrative of his songwriting talents, the modestly scaled “One More Goodbye” exudes plenty of the melancholy, lonesome-traveler lyricism that distinguishes his best albums from other more expendable fare. It is a song tangled up between the tender mercies and bedraggled laments that hang in the wake of a drifter’s escape, riding towards everywhere; a redemption song manipulated out of practically nothing. – keith.

mp3: m. ward – one more goodbye

Volume Two, M. Ward’s second and most recent collaboration with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him, is available along with most of his other records on Merge Records.