Piper Ferguson
Iron and Wine
Indie-Folk Trailblazer By Jim AllenInfluential indie-folk force Sam Beam.
When the gentle, unassuming sounds of singer/songwriter Sam Beam were first heard on 2002's The Creek Drank The Cradle album, few could have guessed that his hushed tones, oblique lyrics, and spare, pretty, acoustic-based tunes would inspire a whole school of indie folk. At the time also a professor in the film department at the University of Miami, Beam was pretty much a one-man band when he started out, and his earliest recordings mostly revolve around his warm, whispered, Nick Drake-ish singing and mellow, measured fingerpicking patterns. But by the time scores of impressionable young balladeers started imitating his style, Beam had already moved on; each of his successive releases marked a leap forward, building up an honest-to-goodness band and venturing into bluesy grooves, psychedelia, Afrobeat and more, as his stock among indie-rock audiences continued to rise. And unlike many artists whose EPs are stopgaps and throwaways, Beam happens to have released some of his finest work in the format, like the indispensible 2005 EP Woman King, and the Calexico collaboration In The Reins from that same year.
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