Subtle stories of humanity from Australian troubadour.
Matt Ward’s third album, ‘The Long Way Home’, treads lightly through what he describes as country music’s three main themes – “the road, Country, and matters of the heart”. This brief summation actually neatly captures what the listener will experience within this record, and with no small amount of nuance and skill.
Opening track ‘Come Home Safe’ launches in on a helter-skelter of words, which tumble and cascade with verve and energy around an eminently catchy and hooky melody. Given this is the opening track, Ward makes no secret of his own Australian background, even referencing kangaroos as the words form a heady road trip through the senses.
Next up is ‘The Last Night’, offering up a continuation of the road theme as a metaphor for journeys we take; this time, though, the music is more reflective and lyrics more ruminative; it’s a really delicate and beautifully realised country folk outing.
The music throughout ‘The Long Way Home’ has a lovely, natural feel, with fiddle, mandolin and steel guitar appearing regularly alongside acoustic and electric guitars, bass and drums. Ward’s voice is a light tenor, never overpowering the stories he is telling, and is a welcome and relaxed presence throughout the record.
A lot of thought has clearly gone into the production, and even the running order, of the album, making it sound authentically like a ‘proper’ collection, rather than a ‘stream the odd track’ offering. An example is keeping ‘Morning Light’ to the centre of the record; it is an obvious highlight, and features the hushed yet powerful duet vocals of Katie Brianna to great effect. It feels like the album flows up to this moment, and then away from it again, like the tide of music keeping a natural flow through the record.
This feels like a very personal offering by Ward; every song feels well crafted, and gently opens his world view to the listener. There are many undercurrents of the natural world, not least in ‘Petrichor’ (petrichor being the rather lovely description of the fresh smell you get after the fall of rain), and the bird song in ‘Find You a Valley’.
The album closes on an intensely human moment, ‘Holding Onto You’. It is sadly based on the experiences of his sister and brother in law, and details a young couple trying to find a way to get by when they have lost a young child (in this case, to a rare genetic disorder). It is heartbreakingly, stunningly mundane in some of its imagery, while the underlying story is in equal parts commonplace and heroic. It is a phenomenal piece of writing, for the temptation to reach beyond the human experience when dealing with this kind of subject matter is sometimes difficult for writers to resist; but by saying less, he says infinitely more.
‘The Long Way Home’ is an album that will likely find a place in the heart of any listener; at just eight tracks, it definitely leaves you wanting more, but that is so much better than the often bloated over reach of so many padded out records of the last twenty years. It is an immensely likeable record, brimful of the milk of human kindness and soul. In times when it feels like the loudest voices are the ones that get the attention, make room for a little quiet wisdom, comfort and sensitivity from Matt Ward.
