Supergroups are all the rave this decade.  Velvet Revolver.  Audioslave.   The Raconteurs.  Chickenfoot.  Next in line are the Monsters of Folk: Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, super-producer Mike Mogis, Retro-Nuevo troubadour M. Ward, and My Morning Jacket front man Jim James.  If the gold standard is the Traveling Wilburys—and it is—the Traveling Wilburys they are not, despite so many media types deeming them to be the next coming.  Nor are they folk in the most Woody Guthrie sense of the word.  Neither declaration is their fault– somebody inevitably has to label them something– but none of the four are far enough along in their careers to carry the burden of being mentioned in the same breath as eternal heavyweights such as Bob Dylan, George Harrison, or Roy Orbison, nor should they be held accountable (though in truth it is their own fault) for the awfully awful moniker.  But their intent seems serious enough, and the Monsters of Folk set out for a full-on musical movement with their self-titled debut.  Whether they come close to accomplishing that, however, is up for a serious debate.

Monsters Of Folk starts off with “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)” and right away Jim Jones and the boys sound like they’re trying to harness their inner Thom Yorke; the song has such a Radiohead “Nude” remix vibe to it that it proves a difficult pace setter for what’s to follow.  Next up is the Oberst led “Say Please” and it’s a complete about face; high on harmony, Oberst heads towards Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young country with Ward on guitar doing an earnest ode to Neil, and though it’s better than its predecessor,  it too falls a few miles short.  Ward leads the way on “Whole Lotta Losin’” and it’s as close as Monsters Of Folk comes to full-fledged romp; Ward is known for his reverence of yesteryear, and like most of his solo stuff, “Losin” is a all-in win; the first homerun of the album.

Monsters of Folk has its share of them, and they seem to come with higher frequency in the Jones-heavy numbers such as “The Right Place” with its alt-country twang that is perfect for this band of misfits; when Jones sings, “I’m in the right place” he’s spot on.  “Baby Boomer” is perhaps the best compilation; with its Johnny Cash-chug-a-chug/The Statler Brothers “Flowers On The Wall”-esque foundation,  Ward, Oberst, and Jones play off each other as if they were always meant to.  When Oberst is left to his own device Monsters can too easily fall into a pattern of sounding too much like another Bright Eyes record however.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that—he’s rightfully earned his place at this table—but the grey area lies in the fact that if you didn’t know any better, the “other guys” can too easily—and do—sound like other guys.  “Man Named Truth” is an exception; the tune is equal parts of everyone he claims to be influenced by, from Dylan, to Young, to especially Emmylou Harris; the tune is tasty, as easily accessible as it is addicting, and the other guys stand out as much as they fit in.

If there’s one common criticism of Monsters Of Folk as a collective of creative guys at the height of their respective creating primes it’s that at more times than not it feels too shared for the sake of sharing, less organic than it probably should; too many times they trade turns shining in the spotlight than they share in shining in it together.  There’s a lot or promise, more than a few payoffs, but it’s less cohesive, and even less coercive.  That and at the conclusion of the album it loses steam quicker than a freight train out of coal.  Monsters Of Folk concludes with “His Master’s Voice” and regrettably it’s a Rip Van Winkle yawn.  People who want to like this album because they worship the guys behind it probably will see little wrong with it; for all intents and purposes, these guys are as close as their generation’s Traveling Wilburys as they’re going to get, and why not love that.  But a more objective person will take pause, noticing the flaws as much as the promise.

As a whole, Monsters Of Folk, is definitely worth a listen, and it’ll be an entertaining one.  Just don’t go in expecting a grand finale.  There are plenty of bottle rockets here.  Just be happy to take what you can get.

On Hold Time, his sixth studio album, Portland, Oregon Indie-rocker M. Ward sounds like a man who is thinking things through, trying to make sense of the proverbial “I’ve been a few places.” On the opener, “For Beginnings, he sings, “When you’re absolute beginners/ It’s a panoramic view,” and from there he’s off to get a closer look at things, from the underground of New York City, to next stop Shangri-La. Faith is on his mind; in “Epistemology” he reveals, “I learned how to hold on from a book of old Psalms”, as is confinement (“Jailbird”), and love (“One Hundred Million Years”, “Hold Time”). He pairs with She & Him co-contributor, Zooey Deschanel on the album’s first single, the toe-tapper “Never Had Nobody Like You” and when he sings, “I trusted liars and thieves in my madness/Honey, I was wasting away in the room/But now that I been through that hell I got a story to tell,” you’ve invested yourself in whatever he’s got to say. Ward’s trademark is that his voice hovers somewhere between a dusty country road and an easy-to-be-a-dreamer star-filled sky summer night, and it’s the perfect compliment to his guitar, which he wields like someone who grew up idolizing George Harrison. The true beauty of both, his voice and his guitar, is the restraint; less sounds just about right pretty much all the time. Hold Time is a fitting title; it’s an homage, or a time capsule of sorts—beyond the obvious parallels of Ward’s breath-of-fresh-air revival of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On”, he and Lucinda Williams beautiful take on the country standard, “Oh Lonesome Blues”, or the Johnny Cash train track chug of “Fisher of Men”—open it and you hear the dusty reminders of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson-like production from time forgotten, when songs could be both worldly colossal and at the same time your closet chum; someone whose hand you just don’t want to let go of because if you do you risk never getting that moment back. Hold Time perhaps isn’t as good as its predecessor, the stalwart 2006 release Post War, but it further solidifies him as the M. Ward of his generation, the same way Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were the Neil Young and Joni Mitchell of theirs; voices worth listening to because hearing them felt so good.