song "Rave On!" Described by Autumn De Wilde Entertainment Weekly as "[feeling] timeless, a musical wanderer's dusty, train-hopping tour through folk, blues, and country," Hold Time received an aggregated 79 out of 100 on Metacritic, for "generally favorable reviews" and reached No. 31 on Billboard's Top 200. A Wasteland Companion and More Rain (2012–present) After several years of touring and releasing albums with pop project She & Him and folk supergroup Monsters of Folk, Ward released his seventh studio album, A Wasteland Companion, in 2012 on Merge and Bella Union. Reaching number 21 in the US charts, A Wasteland Companion received an aggregated score of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Will Hermes of Rolling Stone gave the album 3.5 of 5 stars, reflective of the aggregated score, and commented that "[A Wasteland Companion] is his most vivid and varied yet, full of exquisite guitar work,...gem-like songcraft...and inspired covers." Matthew McFarland of Prefix offered the criticism, "What's missing, though, is the familiar sense of deft control over the album's arc, the lyrical intrigues, and the instrumental detail that make his other work so indispensable [sic] to the indie folk canon of last decade." After another multi-year break from solo recording, M. Ward released his eighth album, More Rain, on March 4, 2016, via Merge and Bella Union. Ward began working on More Rain in 2012, initially experimenting with layering his own vocals to create a doo-wop record. After collaborating with other artists on the record such as R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, k.d. lang, Neko Case, and others, the sound of the album went in a different direction, described as a "true gotta-stay-indoors, rainy-season record that looks upwards through the weather while reflecting on his past." On June 8, 2018, Ward self-released What a Wonderful Industry, his ninth studio album. Using a variety of anecdotes and metaphors, the album examines the complex challenges of working within the cutthroat music industry. As Ward stated in an interview with NPR, "You quickly learn there's a perfectly imperfect balance of cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals in the zoo....This record visits the most memorable characters. There's a lot of very inspirational people I've had the pleasure to work with but there are also a few I wish I'd never met." Ward's tenth studio album, Migration Stories, was released on April 3, 2020, on Anti Records. With other musicians She and Him In 2006,