Iron and Wine
The Shepherd’s Dog
Let me start with the outrageous claim that won this album the big one-one: This album is the Graceland to Creek Drank the Cradle’s Sounds of Silence. It could mean that Rhythm of the Saints is next for Sam Beam, and it could mean that sweaters and collars showing up all over town has wrought some unforeseen consequences amongst the ‘don’t call me hipster’ blogritatics (i.e., assuming that a comparison to 1980’s Paul Simon vs 1970’s Paul Simon is a good selling point to your presumed peers – your mother, OK?), but I’m saying this is one for the canon when we all drink a little less coffee and go to bed a little earlier.
This album is a consensus builder. A critical enthusiast can appreciate the way this album takes the singer-songwriters’ sense of emotional intensity and makes it impersonal, and the way it makes world-music-meets-americana work in spite of the improbability of it all. A listener who may have previously complained about the band’s slow tempo, cryptic and vaguely pastoral take on neo-romantic exaggerations, and general sameness will find variety, a bit of bounce, fun new instruments that go beyond digestible folk guitar, and songs for the citified. A casual listener can hear it on an FM dial, and talk to his somewhat more serious friends about what a nice listen it is without fear of hearing, ‘bah, the new one’s no good. Check out their first album that I don’t listen to anymore because Brooklyn and Canada and shit,’ because those friends like the new one, too. Men in their fifties drop this into phone calls with the younger generation because Sonic Youth is (now famously) just noise, but this Iron & Wine biz-nass, what with the occasional calypso rhythm and the horns adding depth where you wouldn’t expect depth from horns reminds me of… well, Graceland. The liberal arts students are going to find this one in twenty years and claim it for their newly refined palate to prove that they don’t just like it fast and loud. They’ll also probably find sweaters and corduroy jackets around the same time, and decide that they can listen to aggressive music made by black people. Try not to bitch when it happens.
-Josh Woodbeck, 2008
Can't help but say it--excellent analogy. I never would have thought of it myself, but it does charactertize this new album quite well.
Posted by: kara | 2008.02.27 at 11:28