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 …

She & Him have to be the wet dream of lovers-of-all-things-Indie. Zooey Deschanel, the actress you can’t help but fall in love with, and M. Ward, the troubadour you can’t help but tap your toes to. Together, on their debut album Volume One, they forge full steam ahead on the long trip back to 1970’s radio. Consisting mostly of songs written and sung by Deschanel, Volume One is a musical time warp; you didn’t have to live through Carly Simon or Dusty Springfield to hear that Deschanel and Ward did. …

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 …