M.Ward's second solo enterprise verifies the artist as one of those few songwriters who stand between the cracks of time, where he spins a hallucinatory, new universe out of old-world roots. Indeed, there's a real down-home, unpolished luster to End of Amnesia, both in execution and in songwriting, that gives it a timeless, old-fashioned pallor. And yet there's also something just slightly off in the songs, a strange, disembodied quality that seems to come at least partly from an ulterior place, be it real or imagined. That attribute is precisely what gives the music such a singular, distinctive sound and vision. Ward comes off like a sort of one-man the Band with nothing but a beat-up guitar and his sepia croak of a voice.