If M. Ward were a painter his palette would undoubtedly consist entirely of the burnt-out brown, rusted red, and shadowy gray hues that grace the cover of End of Amnesia; every booze-scorched quaver of Ward’s vocal chords creates a sense of rustic decrepitude, while his distressed guitar rings out with the clang of a rusty water-pump. Throughout End of Amnesia Ward swathes his dexterous fingerpicking in hypnotic lo-fi production that makes the sparse textures of songs like “Half Moon” and the eerily rambling title track sound as though they’re emanating from the decaying grooves of a worn old 78 player. Though M. Ward’s attention to sonic detail is certainly impressive, he never emphasizes gloomy atmospherics at the expense of song structure, keeping End of Amnesia’s focus squarely on his dark wordplay and subtle arrangements. Ward’s nostalgic streak is strong but one gets the sense he's invoking America’s mythic past in the service of his own eloquent lyrical explorations of memory and loss. End of Amnesia proves Ward to be a skillful excavator of bygone sounds with a knack for twisting archaic refuse into startlingly contemporary works of art.