That makes for a short, short ride
M. Ward makes music that's both timeless and from spots in your musical subconscious; it's at once old and entirely new. His new album, Transistor Radio, is a great example of how a great songwriter can combine the familiar and new and make something completely original.
This song isn't exactly representative of the song styles on the album, which are mostly of the back-porch and fingerpicked variety, but damn if it isn't a good time (does guest vocalist Jenny Lewis ever offer anything else?). It also gives you a sense of how Ward picks and chooses from other great songs - the piano line in the middle of the song reminds me of the Kinks' "Susannah's Still Alive", personally. Along the same lines, the album starts off with an amazing, instrumental version of the Beach Boys' "You Still Believe In Me", and "Fuel For Fire" is a musical sibling of Glenn Campbell's "Wichita Lineman".
I usually see my role on Robots as little more than a music fan with access to a server, which is why I want to tell you that if you like this song, I hope you'll buy the record.
You can buy it right from Merge Records here, and you can listen to the whole record streaming on their site, here. And hey: listen to it on headphones.