Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Iron and Wine
4th & B, Tuesday, November 27, 8 p.m. 619-231-4343. $20.
There are many singer-songwriters trying to sound like the new Nick Drake, but that goal comes with some serious side effects. Fully inhabiting the role would require living in near obscurity and dying by one's own hand. Your record won't go gold until it appears in a Volkswagen commercial 20 years after you're dead. Who wants that? Better to cheer up a little, hire a good publicist, and get the car commercial while you're alive.
Anyway, Sam Beam, the guy behind Iron and Wine, is widely heralded as one of the best of the new Drakes. Iron and Wine first got the public's attention with a song in Garden State, the movie soundtrack that defined an epoch: the Age of Yuppie-Indie. The song was a cover of Postal Service's "Such Great Heights," which in its original form has been the favorite song of many TV medical shows and commercials over the past few years.
Beam knows how to pick a cover, but his own songs are good, too -- romantic and mysterious and dark, with an occasional touch of the Southern Gothic. I hadn't realized that they had Southern Gothic as far south as Miami, which is where Beam is from, but I don't know what else you would call it when he starts cooing about drunk mothers and praying for rain and farmhouses burning down.
I'm sorry. Beam's voice is soothing and warm, like your grandmother's pecan pie, or whatever cliché you prefer. I like his lyrics, even. It's just that Beam isn't the new Nick Drake -- he's the new James Taylor. And good for him; no one deserves a fate like Drake's.
IRON AND WINE, 4th & B, Tuesday, November 27, 8 p.m. 619-231-4343. $20.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Iron and Wine
Iron and Wine
4th & B, Tuesday, November 27, 8 p.m. 619-231-4343. $20.
There are many singer-songwriters trying to sound like the new Nick Drake, but that goal comes with some serious side effects. Fully inhabiting the role would require living in near obscurity and dying by one's own hand. Your record won't go gold until it appears in a Volkswagen commercial 20 years after you're dead. Who wants that? Better to cheer up a little, hire a good publicist, and get the car commercial while you're alive.
Anyway, Sam Beam, the guy behind Iron and Wine, is widely heralded as one of the best of the new Drakes. Iron and Wine first got the public's attention with a song in Garden State, the movie soundtrack that defined an epoch: the Age of Yuppie-Indie. The song was a cover of Postal Service's "Such Great Heights," which in its original form has been the favorite song of many TV medical shows and commercials over the past few years.
Beam knows how to pick a cover, but his own songs are good, too -- romantic and mysterious and dark, with an occasional touch of the Southern Gothic. I hadn't realized that they had Southern Gothic as far south as Miami, which is where Beam is from, but I don't know what else you would call it when he starts cooing about drunk mothers and praying for rain and farmhouses burning down.
I'm sorry. Beam's voice is soothing and warm, like your grandmother's pecan pie, or whatever cliché you prefer. I like his lyrics, even. It's just that Beam isn't the new Nick Drake -- he's the new James Taylor. And good for him; no one deserves a fate like Drake's.
IRON AND WINE, 4th & B, Tuesday, November 27, 8 p.m. 619-231-4343. $20.
Comments