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 (Stop Start)
Campfire songs from former At The Drive-in icon
As the final chords of At The Drive-In’s Arcarsenal ring out, Jim Ward hurls his guitar at the ground, finishing off a furious and passionate performance at the 2001 Sydney Big Day Out. While the influential group wouldn’t last much longer past this show, it’s interesting to juxtapose the younger, more aggressive Ward to the image projected by his current folk rock preoccupation, a quieter persona that invokes the spirit of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and any number of contemporary singer-songwriter figures. Ward’s debut LP, Quiet In The Valley, On The Shores, The End Begins is actually a patchwork of three EPs, collating his solo output from the past four years. Somewhat guilty of being uneven, the record does demonstrate Ward’s accomplished songwriting. The whistle of a kettle heralds the beginning of Broken Songs, a beautiful tune that glorifies the craft of music as something worth pursuing. Elsewhere, My Town echoes Neil Young, narrating Ward’s passion for his hometown of El Paso, Texas. This isn’t to say that Ward’s work is blemish free, with the meandering, long and largely uninteresting Waves In Spanish proving arduous. Curiously, a bonus disc composed of six ‘electric’ versions of Ward’s songs actually show how much better they sound when not plugged in. The rockier version of Mystery Talks – something that is gentle and sweet in it’s original form – sounds like a poor stadium rock imitation, as if Robbie Williams was doing a cover version. However, Ward’s work is mostly a revelation, something that adds to, rather than detracts from, his ongoing musical legacy.
***½
DARRAGH MURRAY
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