Monsters Of Folk

Monsters of Folk will reissue their debut—and only—album on June 14, adding five unreleased songs recorded in a 2012 session, three years after the album. Listen to one of them, “Disappeared,” below. In addition to the original supergroup of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and M. Ward, the extra songs feature Will Johnson of Centro-Matic.

Monsters of Folk will reissue their debut—and only—album on June 14, adding five unreleased songs recorded in a 2012 session, three years after the album. Listen to one of them, “Disappeared,” below. In addition to the original supergroup of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and M. Ward, the extra songs feature Will Johnson of Centro-Matic.

Monsters of Folk will reissue their debut—and only—album on June 14, adding five unreleased songs recorded in a 2012 session, three years after the album. Listen to one of them, “Disappeared,” below. In addition to the original supergroup of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and M. Ward, the extra songs feature Will Johnson of Centro-Matic.

"Several times, as I listened to M. Ward's Supernatural Thing, I asked myself what year it was. Was it 1952, and was I listening to a track from the Harry Smith Anthology? Was it 1972, and was I eavesdropping on the recording session for After the Gold Rush?No, it's 2023, and M. Ward is one of the special contemporary artists who invite such questions. Ward has clearly mastered the whole vocabulary of American popular music and made serious decisions about how to employ it for his own ends. What Ward shares with Harry Smith's artists and Neil Young is a context of musical and human values: authenticity and intimacy.

In the sunken lands of Arkansas along I-55, there’s a road sign that directs you to a pair of tiny, hardscrabble towns in the Delta. It reads: Marie/Lepanto.

In the sunken lands of Arkansas along I-55, there’s a road sign that directs you to a pair of tiny, hardscrabble towns in the Delta. It reads: Marie/Lepanto.