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░░██░ play yer tunes ███
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pyt Presents:
Artist: Iron & Wine
Album: The Creek Drank The Cradle
Record Label: Sub Pop
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Street Date: 00/00/2002
Ripped Date: 10/17/2002
Genre: Indie
Year: 2002
Ripper: str
Source: Compact Disc
Encoder: EAC/Lame
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Release Information
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From pitchforkmedia.com:
8.1/10
I sometimes wonder if musicians like Samuel Beam (aka Iron
and Wine), envy contemporary "artists" such as Britney
Spears or Linkin Park-- and not for reasons of fame or
money. Spears and Linkin Park, after all, make decidedly
contemporary music that, while tangentially owing debt to
earlier music periods, puts little pressure on them to
legitimize their backgrounds. Spears was once a teen who
liked Madonna; Linkin Park were once teens who liked angst.
That's about all anyone asks of them.
Not so for Sam "Jim" Beam. He makes bare-bones music that
constantly nods to musical periods long since passed,
perhaps the earliest being the 1920s of Blind Lemon
Jefferson. In short, Beam makes roots music with southern
themes, though to end there would do him a disservice. But
now knowing this, you may be wondering: What are his
qualifications? Is this guy authentic?
Where you come from, of course, can automatically grant you
authenticity. Perhaps the best current example of this is
Detroit; if The White Stripes and Eminem grew up in the most
miserable city in the States, they must be for real! Beam,
however, hails from the Miami area, which is not exactly
backwoods Mississippi. Moreover, he teaches cinematography
at a local college (an academic!) and was recently signed to
Sub Pop, of all labels.
Of course, issues of authenticity plagued Bob Dylan at
first. Plus, isn't Neil Young a Canadian? In other words, if
you exhibit enough talent, then the critics will look past
whatever your background may be, and time-- the greatest
critic of all-- will erase any petty misgivings. While Beam
has a long way to go before joining these visionaries, The
Creek Drank the Cradle is a good enough start to make you
forget anything you ever knew about the man. The music
speaks for itself, and for Beam's talent.
The gentle acoustic plucking that ushers in the opener,
"Lion's Mane", may not grab your attention, but Beam's
delicate, hushed vocals sure will. His lyrics, meanwhile,
tread familiar territory without sounding too familiar. He
even tackles love through metaphor without seeming like a
high school poet: "Love is a tired symphony you hum when
you're awake/ Love is a crying baby mama warned you not to
shake."
As with the rest of the album, slide guitar and banjo appear
throughout the first track. The folksy sound sometimes
recalls Nick Drake-- that is, if the British troubadour were
from the bayou instead. In the lolling "Bird Stealing
Bread", Beam's voice then takes on a Drake-ian resemblance,
as he sings, "Did his hand in your hair feel a lot like a
thing you believed in?/ Or a bit like a bird stealing bread
out from under your nose?"
By the time "Faded from the Winter" arrives, the album has
its hooks in you. Beam's overdubbed harmonies, delivered in
a repetitive cadence, are spooky without being forbidding,
bringing Low's early work to mind, if only in pace and tone.
On songs like this one, Beam feels like an artist working in
different hues of the same color-- blue, perhaps, or brown.
But the changes keep coming, subtle though they are. "The
Rooster Moans", with its layered banjos and talk of riding a
rusty train to the Devil, could sit firmly in the middle of
the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and no one would
blink an eye. The southern themes continue on "Upward Over
the Mountain", in which the narrator kills a snake in a
creekbed, but Beam's vocal harmonies are nearer to Simon and
Garfunkel than Ralph Stanley. "Southern Anthem", meanwhile,
brings to mind Crosby, Stills and Nash.
But any potential writhing or wincing is soon dissolved by
"Weary Memory", the album's simplest and perhaps strongest
track. Here, Beam's voice is all his, as he stretches out
his vocal cords and displays a greater range than he had led
the listener to believe he possessed. As the song peaks, all
guitars but one drop out for a brief respite. "Found a photo
of when we were married," Beam sings, breaking the last word
into two. "Leaning back on a broken willow tree/ That's one
memory I choose to carry/ Weary memory I can always see," and
he takes that "see" soaring skyward.
The Creek Drank the Cradle is made of small epiphanies such
as this. There are few guitar solos, if they can even be
called that. Beam rarely gets adventurous with his voice,
and the songs, for the most part, are of the same pace,
tone, lyrical content. Written and performed to tape by Beam
alone, the album could easily be lumped in with other
home-recording talents such as John Darnielle of the
Mountain Goats. But the music here has such deeps roots in a
vast swath of Americana that the bedroom image just wouldn't
suit Beam.
And please don't be fooled by the label. Sub Pop may not be
the foremost purveyors of roots music, but they've proven
before-- in the case of former Screaming Trees frontman Mark
Lanegan-- that they at least know good old-time country and
blues music when they hear it. If indeed The Creek Drank the
Cradle is only half of the material Beam submitted to the
label, then hopefully there's some more Iron and Wine on the
way. It sure beats more mud and honey.
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Track Listing:
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No. Time Track Title
~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
01 2:49 Lion's Mane
02 4:21 Bird Stealing Bread
03 3:17 Faded From The Winter
04 2:49 Promising Light
05 3:25 The Rooster Moans
06 5:56 Upward Over The Mountain
07 3:54 Souther Anthem
08 3:48 An Angry Blade
09 4:01 Weary Memory
10 2:24 Promise What You Will
11 2:43 Muddy Hymnal
CD Time: 0hr39min .. Total Size: 54MB
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