200th post today. Pretty exciting, no?
All kinds of folks have decided on Post-War, the newest record from M. Ward, as their favorite record of the year. This doesn’t totally surprise me. It’s not really my thing – there’s only so much “country boy and the dusty blues” I can handle before I get exhausted – but there’s no denying the talent that went into this record or the passion it exhumes.
Easily my favorite from the record, and among my favorites of the year, this song is an example of everything going right. While his voice gets in the way for me on some songs, here it is a perfect vessel, and it doesn’t hurt that Neko Case joins him to provide perfectly placed backing vocals.
The best moment is at the very end: the driving force of the music fades and the urgency is quelled, and his voice returns, no less potent if more tender for a final refrain: “God it’s great to be alive. Takes the skin right off my hide, to think I’ll have to give it all up someday.” It turns what was already a great song into a transcendence of time and space. Well…time, not space. But you get the idea. If every song on the record had the power of this one, it would indeed be one of my favorites for the year.
Any other song could certainly challenge for second-best, but this one is my favorite. A tribute to a fallen soldier which manages to, in less than three minutes, range from reminiscence to despondency to triumphalism, paying homage to those that have been lost.