This is going to be an interesting and odd combination of Subpop acts<P><BR>Iron and Wine<BR>The Creek Drank the Cradle<BR>[Sub Pop; 2002]<BR>Rating: 8.1 <BR>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. <BR>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? <BR>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. <BR>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. <BR>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." <BR>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?" <BR>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. <BR>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. <BR>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. <BR>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. <BR>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.<P>Love as Laughter<BR>Sea to Shining Sea<BR>[Sub Pop; 2001]<BR>Rating: 8.4 <BR>Negotiating fad is a tricky business. What happens when your brand of fuzzed-out, retro garage rock catches major media attention? When similarly coifed Lou Reed fans are fitted for rotation on MTV? Are you awarded special regard for your prescience, or seen, erroneously or no, as cliché? Do you sink or swim? <BR>The predominance of critically acclaimed retro rock bands this year is an undeniable advantage to comparative veterans like Seattle's Love as Laughter. The smirking suggestions of stadium rock and bluesy, Jagger-esque swagger on Sea to Shining Sea ensures some success in a scene increasingly predominated by bands shedding their 90s no-pretense shtick in favor of rock star posturing. <BR>But Sea to Shining Sea is more than mere posturing. Sam Jayne and company have turned out a kick-ass record that's rock and roll in every sense of rock and roll. Produced by Unwound's Vern Rumsey and the ubiquitous Phil Ek, the record is a slick, skillful outing camouflaged in gritty, raw production. And Love as Laughter don't waste a second proving it. The opening track, "Coast to Coast," builds from an adrenalized Who-like intro into what may be either one of the best tour songs I've ever heard, or the theme song to a potential Love as Laughter TV series, wherein "like every band on the run/ [they] fight for noise and some fun." <BR>In case you don't get the joke, sly allusions to classic rock mainstays are scattered throughout the album. The guitars in the hyperkinetic ode to paradise lost, "Temptation Island," wink at Led Zeppelin. And "Miss Direction," a bluesy Let It Bleed-inspired sing-along (and pun aside, among the album's best tracks), cleverly appropriates one of Paul Simon's most infamous lyrics. <BR>Some of the better moments deviate from the winking allusions to classic rock history. "Sam Jayne = Dead," reputedly inspired by apocryphal bathroom graffiti at Sam Jayne's day job, has a gritty, off the cuff quality, informed by comparatively spare instrumentation and Jayne's unsettled vocals. Similarly, "E.H.," the album's 10½ minute-long closer, builds on a comparatively simple melody with some nice guitar work and fervent vocal delivery. <BR>At its best, Sea to Shining Sea has a dusty, archival aspect; these are songs you'd expect to find hidden in some brilliant but forgotten rock and roll compendium, salvaged after twenty-five years of dust gathering from the backroom of an out of the way record store. There are a couple of misses along the way-- "Drugachusetts," a psychedelic, Eastern-inspired jam, is ambitious, but it leans just a little too much toward kitsch, and "French Heroin," a clumsy Sonic Youth impersonation, suffers as much from seeming essentially out of place on this album as it does from its general mediocrity-- but the accomplishment of the record as a whole largely cancels them out. <BR>The trendmongers and poster boys of 2001 may pass without comment as the next phase of rock revival rears its ugly head. That Sea to Shining Sea conforms to fad undermines its status as a great album, fashion be damned.<BR>Rosie Thomas<BR>When We Were Small<BR>[Sub Pop; 2002]<BR>Rating: 7.3 <BR>Every review I've read of Rosie Thomas-- of anything she does-- makes sure to mention her stand-up alter-ego, Sheila, an extremely self-conscious social outcast who wears coke-bottle glasses and a neckbrace. Some are thrown off by the comedy act, especially juxtaposed with Rosie's otherwise earnest and passionate stage show. But me, I find it adorable. In all honesty, I find Rosie Thomas adorable. I get a tingle just thinking of her. Rosie, if you're out there, I love you. Now make me babies. <BR>Have I said too much? Okay, since the cat's out of the bag, I'll just admit it. At 25 years of age, I have a crush on someone I've never met (although Rosie must share my affections: I also have a non-sexual man-crush on Brad Pitt). Rosie won me over at a concert last fall, when all I knew of the young songstress was that she'd made a cameo appearance on Damien Jurado's "Parking Lot" (off Ghost of David). I didn't like the tune that much, but recognizing her association with Jurado's low-key, honest folk-pop, I felt I couldn't lose. <BR>In the final analysis, I lost two things: jack and shit. The show was amazing, really, a reminder that some indie rockers can actually sing. Rosie's voice is stunning-- a delicate timbre, a beautiful hushed passion, with the requisite lung-power when she needs to drive home a melody. If singing range were a climbing rope, Rosie would ring the bell, and ring it often. To hit the high notes, Thomas employs a gorgeous (and apparent) transition to falsetto. You can tell she likes that shift, and the falsetto itself, as a number of the tunes on her album make that vocal acrobatic a prominent part of the melody (e.g. "Lorraine"). Moreover, in concert, Thomas obviously had a keen sense of dynamics-- during the quieter moments it became clear that, except for Thomas, the venue was in utter silence, captivated. <BR>Until she releases another album, however, I must romanticize my love for Rosie. The soundtrack to my dreams will encompass only a few of the songs on When We Were Small, notably "Farewell" and "Bicycle Tricycle," the most sparse and fragile. I like to imagine Rosie alone on stage with a piano, a guitar, and otherwise utter silence. Her sparse compositions reveal a stunning vulnerability, her voice allowed the full measure of its expressiveness. An album with ten tracks of that sort of pure, barren indie-folk would be spellbinding. <BR>It's not unfortunate so much as it is just a fact, but much of the rest of the album is more pedestrian, weighing in with melodies and compositions that tend towards the "pop" end of the folk-pop spectrum. Like "Finish Line," for example, which harks of Sarah McLachlan, or the darker "I Run," which features a hackneyed melody and orchestration that fails to sell the mood (not to mention that the repeated lyrics "I run far from you" are a tad weak). None of it ramps up the tempo much, or adds density to the mix-- it's not bad stuff, just somewhat unexceptional. <BR>There are some who will fall in love with this album. Others will fall asleep to it. Both will agree that it's a solid debut, long on talent but maybe a bit short on melody or lacking in appropriate production. I had big expectations, some of which were met, but others of which were disappointed. Nonetheless, I remain devoted. Now make me babies.<P><BR>Shins<BR>Oh, Inverted World<BR>[Sub Pop]<BR>Rating: 8.0 <BR>For the majority of Americans, it's a given: summer is the best season of the year. Or so you'd think, judging from the anonymous TV ad men and women who proclaim, "Summer is here! Get your [insert iced drink here] now!"-- whereas in the winter, they regret to inform us that it's time to brace ourselves with a new Burlington coat. And TV is just an exaggerated reflection of ourselves; the hordes of convertibles making the weekend pilgrimage to the nearest beach are proof enough. Vitamin D overdoses abound. <BR>If my tone isn't suggestive enough, then I'll say it flat out: I hate the summer. It is, in my opinion, the worst season of the year. Sure, it's great for holidays, work vacations, and ogling the underdressed opposite sex, but you pay for this in sweat, which comes by the quart, even if you obey summer's central directive: be lazy. Then there's the traffic, both pedestrian and automobile, and those unavoidable, unbearable Hollywood blockbusters and TV reruns (or second-rate series). Not to mention those package music tours. <BR>But perhaps worst of all is the heightened aggression. Just last week, in the middle of the day, a reasonable-looking man in his mid-twenties decided to slam his palm across my forehead as he walked past me. Mere days later-- this time at night-- a similar-looking man (but different; there a lot of these guys in Boston) stumbled out of a bar and immediately grabbed my shirt and tore the pocket off, spattering his blood across my arms and chest in the process. There's a reason no one riots in the winter. <BR>Maybe I need to move to the home of Sub Pop, where the sun is shy even in summer, and where angst and aggression are more likely to be internalized. Then again, if Sub Pop is releasing the Shins' kind-of debut (they've been around for nine years, previously as Flake, and then Flake Music), maybe even Seattle has turned to the bright side. For some have hailed Oh, Inverted World as the next great entry in a long line of clean and carefree pop albums that strings back to the Beach Boys' early surfing days. This is what's meant by "sunny" music: both laid-back and upbeat, with crystalline vocals and lyrics that, while sincere, aren't particularly weighty. <BR>Thankfully, the Shins are a little more unpredictable than the summer, with its incessant, oppressive heat. "Caring is Creepy," the opener, recalls the slower numbers on Sunny Day Real Estate's last prog-heavy offering, The Rising Tide. James Mercer's voice is nearly as inhuman and unclear as Jeremy Enigk's, and his dramatic delivery shifts momentum almost as often. A less fortunate similarity is the echo-heavy vocals, which likewise provide ample pretension, but they're not enough to derail this good rock song. <BR>The following track, "One by One All Day," is decidedly different. The more conventional vocals are instead layered and slightly withdrawn, allowing the thumping drums and jangly guitar to share the forefront. However, for all its pleasantness, it's fairly uniform. "Weird Days," the most obvious Beach Boys-inspired song here, slows the pace to a drift. Like the previous number, it's not particularly dynamic, but the vocals and tropical strumming are pretty enough. <BR>The Shins start showing their real strengths with "Know Your Onion!" which sounds like a 60's British garage band striving for the Kinks and just falling short. Just. The hook is surprisingly deceptive, the occasional childish background vocals are fun without being irritable, and there's even a welcome hint of their previous sound, which comes in the form of a slow, Modest Mouse-like interlude that ends with a patented Guided by Voices guitar lick. <BR>"Girl on the Wing" is another strong, but more straightforward pop song that rides along on ringing keyboard notes not unlike-- but less abrasive than-- GBV's "Titus and Strident Wet Nurse (Creating Jeffrey)" from this year's Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel compilation. But "Pressed in a Book" is undoubtedly the most straightforward, and perhaps the best song on Oh, Inverted World. The sound is like Weezer at their best-- simple, addictive chord changes and clear, sing-song vocals-- but for some background rattling and a few slow, strummy passages. <BR>At times, though, the Shins seem too content to float along. The folky "New Slang" is Simon and Garfunkel all the way down to the celestial humming. "The Celibate Life," with its distant guitar and soft percussion, would be a carbon copy of the Magnetic Fields if it weren't for a lone harmonica. "Your Algebra" returns to S&G, this time to their chantey side, adding only a spare, diligently picked acoustic guitar as accompaniment. But despite the obvious comparisons, these songs are too pretty to turn down. <BR>Like summer itself, the Shins are slightly over-hyped. All the buzz that's surrounded this release had me thinking (read: hoping) it would be the pop album of, at the very least, this summer. Oh, Inverted World comes close, but too much of the material here recalls other bands to consider it a "great" album. Nonetheless, I still can't believe this is what most people think summer sounds like. I only wish this wretched season sounded so good.<P>
