ANTI-RECORDS
The always busy, always discerning Monster Of Folk delivers a prescient album of blissful, largely instrumental lullabies for his 10th solo LP. Working with Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury, Richard Reed Parry and producer Craig Silvey, Migration Stories was recorded at the band’s Montreal studios. The feel is tender and sonambulant, with pretty much everything captured first take, but beneath the quietude of Ward’s sleepy croon, lies a dark mood, the record his vehicle for channeling the troubling news events surrounding him. Opener Migration Of Souls and the breezy Unreal City, handclaps and all, are imagined escapes from the apocalyptic swirl of 2020. The gentle shuffle of Heaven’s Nail And Hammer is wonderfully soothing and his take on the cowboy ballad Along The Santa Fe Trail is a treat. Effortless beauty.