No matter what context in which you first hear M. Ward, it is as if a small wrinkle in time momentarily opens and the music intercedes between some dusted-over, forgotten world and the dreams that remain for this one. Ward has long been viewed as a champion of traditional American music, a revivalist of early rock ’n’ roll. His voice always sounds distant, in the same way that you swear that whisper in your ear is coming from across the room. Each song unfolds like an artifact uncovered, anachronistic to modern ears as if drifting in from another age. On Post-War, his latest record for indie giant Merge, Ward turns his talents toward the future with the same verve he has displayed towards the past.

Post-War is a departure for Ward, though perhaps more on paper than to the ear. Here he looks to the future thematically, yet he is more embedded in the present than ever, covering Daniel Johnston rather than the Beach Boys and Bach with lyrics elliptically imagining soldiers returning home from our current war. Speaking of the album’s title, Ward stated, “I tried to give it a chronological background that wouldn’t be tied down to a specific place.” He goes on to explain, “The Transistor Radio album was about looking back. This one is about looking forward, but it’s also about post-WWII production styles in rock ’n’ roll.” Recorded in an attic, the sound is both cavernous and warm, distinctly tethered to a place, yet mutable.

Ward’s adoption of mid-century analogue and tape technology is more than a stylistic or sonic decision. On one hand, it is as simple as his conviction that “the machines were better. The mics were better. Not to say that is the way to make a great record, but it is a better archetype than what seems to be the aim now.” This simplification belies the theoretical depth behind his choices in production. In his excavation of older production styles, he hopes to find something of the spirit that first sparked the revolutionary musical forms from the ’40s and ’50s. He sees that political discontent paralleled in our current climate, and seeks to revive “music as a representative of a change in the way Americans are looking at war.”

In the strange light of war, tracks such as “To Go Home,” “Right in the Head,” and “Requiem” take on the spirit of the soldier’s worn correspondence sent home to loved ones, the crackle of the acoustics emphasizing nothing if not distance. Ward sings them as a plea of remembrance, marking the distinction between the sympathy of the public and a song “able to express empathy in a few verses.” In relation to its supposed political content, most important to the album for Ward is “the domesticity of the return...it is to the benefit of the song if someone can relate a song about coming home to some lesser battle [in their own life].” Post-War is full of these moments of tension collapsing into joyous exclamation, songs tempered with the struggle of love and other lesser battles.

No matter the content of the songs, the American musical tradition is always the unspoken subject. Tellingly, when pressed on his place in the continuum of musical history, Ward recounted a recurring dream he had in which he was a “fly on the wall at the Grand Ole Opry getting the opportunity to just listen to music.” In some ways, he seems as much of a medium as an artist, with ghosts of early radio shuddering through his songs. To hear him tell it, his job is more to listen than to sing; that being a musician affords him the ability to immerse himself in music without the distraction of a nine-to-five. However he wishes to classify himself, whether artist or audience for some more profound melody, I hope to be able to listen to whatever it is that he is hearing.