White Tooth Man vs. Resurrection Fern
Work and life are interesting lately, though I should point out that I’ve been listening heavily to a few albums.
It also amuses me to no end that David Allen keeps popping up on my last.fm artist list. God bless audiobooks.
Anyway, here’s a quick post that will hopefully spawn some discussion.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the most recent Iron & Wine album, the Shepherd’s Dog, for two reasons, really:
- Erin likes it, which means that she picks it when it is her record player turn; this has made me pay attention to it more, and
- I’ve been wondering why it was just sort of overlooked by me since I bought it. Why didn’t I check this one out much?
At any rate, today I realized that the song that she likes most (as she would say, Her Jam) and the one that (so far) I enjoy hearing most couldn’t be more different as far old Iron & Wine’s formula goes. I then figured, what’s better than asking the internet something?
NOTHING.
So here you go! Let’s compare these two tracks, and discuss a)which one you like better and b)why. Hate ‘em both? Mention that, too! In a future post I’ll talk about my own take on differing tastes here.
Exhibit A: White Tooth Man
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Exhibit B: Resurrection Fern
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
P. S. I&W’s record label mispelled the album as “the Shepard’s Dog” on the downloadable-cuz-I-got-vinyl tracks. Funny, that.
Tags: comparison, Music
May 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I think on any given day, I would prefer something in the vein of White Tooth Man. It’s a unique sound that I associate instantly with Iron & Wine. With songs of his like this I tend to listen to the melodies and the percussion and the individual guitar parts more than anything else.
As for Resurrection Fern, Beam’s slow songs have an amazing capacity to calm me like almost no other musical artist. When I occasionally have what I can only describe as panic attacks, I find that laying back and listening to a slow Iron & Wine song can really put me back in a calm place; there’s something so comforting about it.
So uh I’m copping out and saying “usually White Tooth Man, but thank god for songs like Resurrection Fern”.