M. Ward Releases Cover Of The Sugarcubes’ “Birthday”
M. Ward has shared a new rendition of The Sugarcubes song “Birthday” today, listen to it here.
“I learned this old song a long time ago but never performed or recorded it until I made this a month ago in Portland - the lyrics have always seemed timeless and southern gothic, like Flannery O’Connor to me,” Ward explained. “When I shifted the music down a few steps to an open tuning I discovered in the key of B as in "birthday".”
This January M. Ward will embark on a European tour, his first European tour dates since the release of the two albums he put out in 2020, ‘Migration Stories’ and ‘Think Of Spring’. All upcoming dates are listed below.
Released last December, ‘Think of Spring’ is a moving rendition of Billie Holiday’s album ‘Lady In Satin’. “The combination of vintage tech and classic tunes creates a bit of a dreamy shimmer, a quality that suits Ward’s quiet rearrangements of familiar tunes,” Pitchfork said of the record.
Also called ‘spare and haunting’ by Portland Monthly, ‘Think of Spring’ features classic songs “You’ve Changed” – originally written in the ‘40s by Carl Fischer - and “All The Way”, famously sung by both Holiday and Frank Sinatra. Additionally, “For All We Know” is a wistful yet beautiful track, saying: “We come and go like a ripple on a stream/tomorrow may never come for all we know.” Listen to the record here.