Today’s post for A Year In December features something that reminds me of the Animorphs series. In fact, this is on something by M. Ward.
M. Ward is one of those artists I’m happy to know nothing about and it’s totally down to lack of trying. Google’s spiders generally return excerpts that mention how M. Ward isn’t all that great. This year’s What A Wonderful Industry is no different. However, I know what I’ll get when I listen to his music: warm, light, relaxing, more or less acoustic music. Sure, this song’s shark metaphor for music manager isn’t creative, but it’s what he does with it musically. An opening lyric like “Tommy is a tiger shark, lives in the Bengal Sea” is the type of whimsy Saunders-like playfulness I appreciate. I especially like the subtle dips in melody, going down where you think he’ll sustain the final note in that line. This was the first track I checked out from the surprise album and it was good enough for me to give the entire thing a listen. I’m glad I did.
Joel Mak 