Ward White — Ward White Is The Matador (10th Anniversary Edition)

Description

Ward White wrote thirteen songs in a near-fugue state. The fourteenth lasted two hours before anyone found the exit.

In late 2013, White emerged from the elaborate comic opera Bob with his appetite for structure, narrative and danger thoroughly enlarged. He wrote the core of Ward White Is The Matador at speed, then brought in psych-pop maximalist Bryan Scary and the steadier hand of Graham Norwood to help turn the songs into a record.

White, Norwood, drummer Everet Almond and the production team built the arrangements in a single evening, then captured the rhythm tracks live across two twelve-hour days at Brooklyn’s Wescott Music. Strings, percussion, guitars and voices followed; Joe McGinty’s Carousel Studios supplied a Baldwin electric harpsichord, modular Moog and a real Chamberlin.

At the end of tracking, the exhausted group fell into a two-hour improvised monologue with instrument-swapping accompaniment. Scary and engineer Bryan Smith carved it into “The Olde Days,” the 21-minute Grand Guignol finale that makes the album’s thirteen compact noir-glam songs look almost well behaved.

Creative clashes followed the record into the mix, but the friction suited the material: suave crooning, psych-pop colour, glam swagger and the creeping dread White drew from Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe.

Fourteen tracks. Two Bryans. One matador. Creative detente never sounded so well dressed.