Album Review: Iron and Wine - Fall 2007

Originally posted at Crappy Indie Music

Essentially the demo versions of Shepherd's Dog, this feels like a personal concert playing in my bedroom. It is stripped completely naked, just Sam and a guitar and it's great to hear these songs like this. There's some serious differences here too. "Boy With A Coin" has an extended vocal section that I've only heard live. "Innocent Bones" has a slightly slower tempo and achieves even more intimacy than the album cut.

The entire thing is so intimate and warm it makes me feel like Sam Beam is hitting on me while I'm sitting in front of a fireplace. He reaches over in between songs and fills my wine glass again. I reconsider my commitment to the heterosexual lifestyle as he winks subtly at me and picks up his guitar.

This brings me straight back to The Creek Drank the Cradle and falling head over heels in love with this mans voice and guitar style. It's not nearly as scratchy as earlier works (let's hear it for the cash of success!) but it still feels like a bedroom album, raw and unapologetically simple. It's good songwriting technique, filling an entire track with voice and guitar and only lending support to the song with other instrumentation.

The collection closes with Resurrection Fern, my personal favorite track off of Shepherd's Dog and a lullaby of quiet beauty. Revisiting one of my favorite records from 2007 in it's raw state has been a great experience and I look forward to Around The Well, the upcoming collection of rare and unreleased Iron and Wine due on May 19th this year.

Available for free on Iron and Wine's website.
Released today: "The Trapeze Swinger" from the film "In Good Company"

M. Ward: Hold Time

Hold Time is music from an alternate history where Chet Atkins started taking psychedelics with Tom Waits on a farm in the middle of the desert and cutting records. These are the radio broadcasts from a parallel universe where AM radio is king and vacuum tubes are driving the information revolution. It is hand crafted, natural and deeply poetic music. "One Hundred Million Years" is Ward in classic form, riding the steam train of Americana between the easy flow of the West Coast and the stomp of the Mississippi shores. This is one more in a series of fantastic albums from M. Ward and includes an appearance from Lucinda Williams on "Oh Lonesome Me", a Don Gibson Cover that showcases his ability to update a classic tune without missing the soul of a song. The album ends with an aching and heartbroken instrumental composition of starlight and lonely highway signs stretching out into the horizon, begging you to just start it all over again.

Samples available on Amazon.

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion

Animal Collective has released a full length album almost every year since 2000 and they have lost none of their tenacity or experimentation in the process. This album is a limo taking you through modern music, it shifts smoothly between the bright pop of “My Girls” into the off kilter and entrancing rhythms of “Also Frightened”, past the stomping and cheering “Summertime Clothes” and right into the dark reverb laden mysteries of "Daily Routine" for a drink. They ride the edges of experimental music like a breaking wave, sometimes dipping the front of the track over the edge but bringing you back to the groove without you ever noticing. If you haven't listened to Animal Collective before, know that they write intentional and complex music that demands your undivided attention and that you will be immensely rewarded for your effort. If you have listened to them before, go out and get your eighth amazing Animal Collective LP.

Good for: Headphones in the dark, headtrips in the light.

The Be Good Tanyas: Blue Horse

The trip to Canada was not my idea. My life had sunk low into a haze of depression and drinking and nothing would drag me out. Well, no amount of bitching and whining would get me out of this one. My brother had made this very clear. By the time I woke up in the back of my car we were stopped at the border station just north of New York. Hill Island. The air had changed so subtly I hardly noticed.

I was still drunk from the night before so I crawled back into the nest of coats and pillows and dipped in and out of sleep for another couple hours. The world started shaking and I snapped out of my dreams with a start. Jim was shaking me, telling me we had arrived. "Where the fuck did you take me?". "Smiths Falls, now get up. We're getting coffee" I grumbled my way out of the car and into the sunlight. Sobriety is a bitch and this cold wind and clear sun was not making it any easier.

The cafe was a good ten yards from where we parked, but the parking lot stretched into the horizon in my eyes. Damn this place, damn these smiling Canadians and damn you Jim. I slapped my hand against the door hoping I'd hit someone coming out. Damn again, no one caught the door in the face. Jim shoved me forward and into the nearest booth. "What can I get you boys?", a tall pleasant looking face said somewhere above the rim of my sunglasses. "Double Maker's Mark neat and an ashtray" I grumbled. "He'll have coffee" from the other side of the table. Damn you Jim.

The coffee arrived in a carafe, the scent burned it's way through my nose and straight into my brain. Canada has coffee game. Jim and I started the ritual of coffee, passing sugar and cream back and forth in a game as old as our brotherhood. Over my shoulder I heard the drone of tuning and the clicks and rustles of busy stage work. "What the fuck is this Jim? You drag me all the way to Canada to listen to a fucking band?". "Shut up Eriq, listen."

The Be Good Tanyas sung me into salvation that night. I was their willing captive for the entire performance. Delicate strums on acoustic guitars drove sweet spikes of remorse deep through my festering wounds. The aching arch of fiddle danced with all of my fears, putting them to bed with understanding and compassion and vocal harmonies that gave me hope for the first time in years. These girls had found the best of America and distilled it with pure Canadian glacier water. I cried the entire night, drops of my past falling into the coffee held in front of me.

As the band wished us well upon our way, I wiped my face dry with the remnants of the napkin and ran for the door. The night time air slapped me in the face hard enough to lose my balance. The stars and I stared at each other for hours. A cruching of snow wakes me from my communion. "Do you get it? Are you ready to go?" "Sure."

I saved this in my photo album with Langhorne Slim, Po' Girl and Uncle Earl

Listen to my journey at Amazon.com

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions: Bavarian Fruit Bread

The blinds are shut against the setting sun and the dust floating around the room is dancing it's seductive dance against your eyes. Every curl of smoke drifting up from the bed is a testament to flesh, a poem written in the air. Angels sing the song of lovers and beg you to stay here, stay in this perfect crystallized Sunday moment. Each breath you take is a photograph of seduction, passion and the empty bottle of wine rolling softly across the wooden floor. Why should you leave?

Hope Sandoval is telling you not to. This record transcends sexiness into something closer to divinity, the perfected art of early morning lovemaking, a gentle caress of an album that doesn't want you to leave for work.

It is the whispered word at the end of a long night out with friends, a more comfortable place to relax and be alone together, a chance to peer deep into the mysteries of sunrise from the other side of night. This is a world full of warm guitar tones, gentle harmonica trails and the light touch of drums and organ all coming together to get through your pants and into your heart.

There is a leather bound book I keep in my room full of loves lost and found, of dreams and hopes that never came to be and the yellowing notes from lovers past. I keep this album there with Keren Ann, Jose Gonzalez, Mazzy Star and Damien Rice.

Good for: Playing songs on the skin of your lover, treating every touch like a chord.

Leonard Cohen: Death Of A Ladies' Man

There is this heavy air in the hotel lobby. All of the dreams of afternoon lovers are pooling here at the entrance and threatening to choke off your air. Lost in a haze of emotion and unsure of each footstep you stumble further through the red and gold wallpapered pathways of midnight hell towards the record player casting shadows out of a doorway.

There are memories tied to every note, remorse on every staff line of this ode to the moment you're in. Vision blurred, stumbling towards the song floating into the room you fall into the bed in slow motion. Leonard Cohen can seduce you in ways you never thought were possible. He has forgotten more about being spiritually and physically naked than most of us have ever known.

This is definitely not music for listening to at work, in the car or any time you're not able to grab a bottle of wine and take off your clothes. If you have someone to share this album with, you're in the place he wants you to be. Leonard Cohen is a poet of the highest order, sparing with his words and generous with emotion. But don't listen to me, listen to him. I lock this album up in my liquor cabinet with Nick Drake, Ani Difranco and Joe Henry.



Good for: Melting the clothes off of your lover with poetry.

Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

I'm watching the stars glide past my eyes in the back of a 1976 Buick station wagon, the smell of the vinyl seats mixing with the pine trees flying past. This is a late night trip down an ancient road past the city lights and noise. Here is the sound you need while you watch moths struggle to join the fluorescent oblivion of a gas station parking lot sign on the road back from a place you never wanted to be.

Neko Case weaves your desire for a better life around a rusted state road sign and wraps the whole thing in an old newspaper before passing it down the bar to you. This album exists in that incredible undefined space between country music, indie folk and singer-songwriter material. It makes me remember why I think genre is bullshit. It's so hard to pin this album down and it's even harder to try and put a label on Neko Case.

Her work has ranged significantly since starting out and it just keeps getting broader and better the more she works. On another awesome note, she grew up in Northern Virginia which is none too far from my own city of Richmond and knowing a bit about the area gives me an understanding of the musical authenticity she's seeking. For those who don't know, Northern Virginia is like Disneyland for conspicuous consumers. It's ridiculous, trust me. This album is rocking me gently with Ryan Adams, Nick Drake, Gillian Welch and Ron Sexsmith.

Good for: Watching blue smoke curl off the bar in a Waffle House just down the road from the dump.

Listen to samples at Last.fm! I recommend you check out Star Witness, soooo awesome.

Sun Kil Moon: Tiny Cities

Sometimes a collection of covers reaches so far beyond its source that it takes on a life of its own and takes you by the hand to the place where it all began. I had never really listened to Modest Mouse until after I heard this record played. You say "Surely you'd heard some Modest Mouse!" I had, but it never really got under my skin the way Sun Kil Moon did.

This collection takes what are now very familiar tunes (Modest Mouse now lives happily on my iPod) and turns them into haunting epics of failure and regret that spin off of steel strings in slow waves, reaching deep inside to turn that knob that keeps you cool about music.

There's something about Mark Kozelak's voice that makes it impossible to keep your distance from him. All the better, I think music is best when experienced directly and that's what this album delivers. This is an old pair of jeans and a dog eared book. These songs are the faded memories of lovers, drifting to the surface on a lazy afternoon. I keep this one right next to my heart along with Iron & Wine, Hope Sandoval, Keren Ann and Elliott Smith.

Good for: Thinking long and hard about the world, looking into mirrors.
Listen to samples at Last.fm!

Iron and Wine: The Shepard's Dog

I started listening to Iron and Wine a few years back, and every time they release a new album I love them a little more. The Shepard's Dog is a direct evolution from In the Reins, an album produced and recorded with Calexico.

The influence of those sessions is all over this album, larger arrangements, more complex harmonies and significantly more vocal presence than earlier albums. I appreciate the stripped down ballads of earlier works, but this albums dynamics gives it a little more room to wiggle. I've always thought of their earlier works as late night blueberry wine, crickets in the yard, summer breezes and lamenting loves lost.

This album finds me enjoying an afternoon with friends, driving down dirt roads to secret places and washing my face in sunlight. It lives in my iPod with Jim White, Damien Rice, Elliot Smith, Sun Kil Moon and Calexico.

Good for: Making out on the banks of a river, drinking beer in the sun. Going back to your place for dinner and undressing by the ashes of the fire (from Resurrection Fern, Track 8). It's like that.