There comes a time when things around you gradually begin to lose weight and fade their impression. The time you feel everything has been overdone, been unoriginal and have embarked cliche, you just need one resourceful inspiration to erase these tedious sighs and ‘blow’ you up.
After being introduced to indie-pop (after an exhausting adolescence with heavy metal and hardcore subgenres), I swiftly got drowned in what the artists in this easy-listening genre had to offer. Since I’ve been ‘boringly straight’ lately, female artists as Katie Melua, Laura Marling, Mazzy Star, Joanna Newsom, Azure Ray, etc. had caught me the biggest. And after exploring the related artists sections in last.fm, I came across one good musician after the other, most of which didn’t seem to completely be related to the musical style I had wished for, but again they pretty much worked out. But in no time, I realised the good fishes in the pond were nearly going to finish, leaving only some wanky, eerie crabs. Most of the artists started to sound the same, at least musically, and the horizons didn’t seem too far stretched.
I then came across Iron & Wine and then stopped for a while, mused, and smile.
Samuel Beam (popularly known as Iron & Wine) is superb in what he does and how he manages to bend his sound away from the otherwise insignificant pop standards. This is not indie-pop totally, but an amalgamation with folk, blues and rock, and his creations are remote from other similar musicians as he always engages an add-on or other to avoid the void of repetition. Also, another differentiating element is the lyric – very abstract, relatively darker/gloomier and atypical to the musical style it’s exhibited. Samuel is an agnostic by religious beliefs, but he numerously puts in the Christian terminologies in his words, also often to define his agnosticism (mostly seen in the album “The Shepherd’s Dog”). If you’ve heard him, you know better. If not, have some listen;
This is utterly a very good find for me, and I can’t believe I’d been neglecting I&W all this time, although I had a copy of “The Shepherd’s Dog” full-length. This, for me, is an oasis amid the desert!
Sarcastic Existence 