albums of the decade - 11. Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle

11. Iron & Wine- The Creek Drank The Cradle (2002)

This could be called lo-fi, introspective folk, a lover whispering in your ear at night, many things in fact. But it's more like poetry to guitar. Dustedmagazine examined up Sam Beam's songwriting approach better than I ever could:

"One of the album's overt preoccupations is with animals, and they're examined with a child's sense of wonder and association. For Beam, love hides in lion manes, cuckolding men swoop down like birds stealing bread, and worry slinks like a snake in the creek bed. But these things eclipse metaphor, existing as parts of a tangible patchwork of birds and beasts, hard times and good, all unfolding in an immediate southern landscape. In "Faded From Winter", a gently autumnal guitar melody carries Beam's voice as if on a gust of wind – only very quietly and self-effacingly there at all – as he attempts to unravel the secrets of a family member, "a poem of mystery / the prayer inside me", by way, in part, of the dog sleeping on the floor beside them. It's one of many cases in which every word feels purposeful, and the mentioned texture of "needlework and seedlings" offsets perfectly the wonderful overdubbed harmony of Beam's vocals. Because he very smartly doesn't perceive the need to overstep and add flourish to his rudimentary approach, Beam concentrates very skillfully on the cadence of each word, the resonant twang of each note, and affects in a way that too many miss in over-reaching."