If there’s anything folk aficionados can count on, it’s for Americana lifer M. Ward to be consistently pleasant. The musician brought his homespun, tea-and-honey live act to the House of Blues on Tuesday night, soothing the audience into sleepy complacency with an acoustic guitar and his trademark raspy whisper.
The night began with a solid opening set from Lee Ranaldo, former Sonic Youth guitarist and Spin’s recently named number one guitarist of all time (along with Thurston Moore, of course). Ranaldo and company played through much of the material from his latest solo album, a record vaguely reminiscent of his no-wave days with SY but peppered with folk and alternative-influenced patterns. While the album itself sounds somewhat tired and, unsurprisingly, like a watered-down Sonic Youth record, Ranaldo’s live rendition remained dynamic, with intricate guitar work (including playing the electric guitar with a violin bow) and strong drumming from longtime bandmate Steve Shelley.
Still, these impressive forays into experimental guitar work and Nels Cline-like soloing seemed out of place as the opening act for the sleepily easygoing M. Ward. When the folk master took the stage, the audience, it seemed, had already forgotten the bold experimentation of Ranaldo’s band, preferring Ward’s more conventional renditions of old standards such as the classic, “I Got Ideas,” off of his latest album, A Wasteland Companion. Oddly enough, M. Ward and company seemed to largely stay away from playing songs off of the new album despite its recent release, preferring to borrow from pre-Hold Time favorites.
While Ward’s performance remained consistent with his albums without much variation for most of the show, the real highlight of the set came when his bandmates left him alone onstage with an acoustic guitar. At times, on his albums, Ward’s incredible skill as a finger-picking guitarist is lost in lo-fi fuzz, so subtly comforting that it becomes unnoticeable. Onstage, however, Ward comfortably plucked and soloed for almost ten minutes, dancing dreamily across the stage with an almost childlike grin plastered across his face.
The show was, in typical M. Ward fashion, classically folky, which some might call boring (exasperated shouts of “Play Bob Dylan!” echoed predictably around the room), but others might call reliably Americana. The setup behind the stage featured several large windows with screens behind them depicting the lights of a city at night, which only added to the feel that M. Ward had come to play at your living room and not to a sizeable venue like the House of Blues. Such is a testament to the power of M. Ward’s skill and style: if a show so quiet I could hear my own foot tapping could still hold a large audience’s attention, that’s gotta speak to something.
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