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M. Ward

with support from BAT FANGS

Gates: 5:30pm
Doors: 6:30pm
Show: 7:00pm

Reserved Seating: $75
Standing Room: $45

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M. WARD

A prolific writer, producer, and performer, M. Ward has established himself as one of modern American music’s most unique and versatile voices. While he’s perhaps best known for his own remarkable output—nine acclaimed studio albums that have prompted Rolling Stone to hail him a “folk hero” and The Guardian to praise him as “a maverick auteur who draws upon blues, folk, country and art-rock, and is equally adept within each genre”—Ward may be equally celebrated for his wide-ranging and adventurous collaborations.

In just the last decade alone he’s teamed up with Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Jim James to form the beloved super group Monsters of Folk, paired with Zooey Deschanel for six records as She & Him and worked in the studio and on the road with the likes of Mavis Staples, Jenny Lewis, Norah Jones, Cat Power, Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, Peter Buck, and countless more.

Ward’s newest album, ‘Migration Stories’ (out April 3), marks his eleventh studio release and his debut for ANTI- Records. Recorded at Arcade Fire’s Montreal studio, the collection is languid and hazy, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy as it reckons with a world that feels more divided than ever before, even as its inhabitants grow more inextricably linked by the day. Ward’s delivery is tender and gentle throughout the album’s eleven intimately rendered meditations, but there’s an undercurrent of darkness floating just beneath the surface, a persistent sense that the end may be closer than any of us dare to realize.

Eerily beautiful opener “Migration of Souls” imagines a reunion beyond the boundaries of space and time, while the slow-shuffling “Heaven’s Nail and Hammer” gets lost in the stars, and the driving “Unreal City” searches for peace in a post-apocalyptic swirl of synthesizers. It’s a record that draws on the full gamut of Ward’s profound powers as an artist, mixing folk tradition and timeless song craft with bold production and transportive sonic landscapes.

BAT FANGS

Born of a shared love of hair metal, partying, and the reckless spirit of rock and roll, Washington D.C./ Carborro, NC duo Bat Fangs brings a fiery combination of shredderistic guitars and heavily harmonized hooks. Guitarist/vocalist Betsy Wright (Ex Hex) and drummer Laura King (Mac McCaughan, Speed Stick) united after playing a show together in their respective projects, with the goal of pushing Wright’s pop focused songwriting in a bolder, brasher direction. Taking up the primary songwriting role and shifting to guitar, Wright steps outside of the typical Ex Hex sound with Bat Fangs’ rowdy rock.

Their sophomore LP, Queen of My World is a reeling, rocking mass of guitar and vocals that serves as both a reclamation and a reevaluation of a sound that was once a breeding ground for a particularly egregious brand of cock rock dude-bro. Paying tribute to the glam rock and metal sounds of their youth while offering a modernized alternative to an era of music that deified toxic masculinity as a core value, Wright and King represent a new model of Rock Stardom that’s less about the Stars and more about the Rock.

On “Talk Tough”, the first song written for this LP, Wright sings of music carrying her into a near supernatural state, describing herself as being “in the cosmic sea”, and inviting others “crawl out the window on to a higher plain”. This otherworldliness permeates throughout the record, applying magical perspectives to real lived experiences.

Queen of My World looks into life’s little moments and sees the mystical within the ordinary. Though many of the songs are autobiographical, at its core the record is a lens into other worlds, gazing into timelines that could have been and childhood memories so distant they may as well be past lives.

One such reminiscion takes place on the title track, which reflects on a wild adolescence of drugs and destruction, with an aggressive guitar attack to match. Underneath the high octane teenage antics is a genuine tribute to the unique friendships that can only form in the pseudo-invincibility of youth.

As the record examines deeper into these alternate dimensions, it becomes increasingly psychedelic. The culmination of this is closing track “Into the Weave”, an instrumental jam that builds over a repeated tom groove into a full throttle barrage of guitar and drums. As it trails off, one last vocal harmony shines through, a sign that we’ve exited the mythical realm Queen of My World occupies, and moved on to the next.

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