Iron and Wine: The Creek Drank The Cradle : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The Creek Drank the Cradle comes to you courtesy of one Sam Beam, who wrote, performed and produced this enticingly stripped-down release in his Miami home. Acoustic and slide guitar and banjo back Beam's calm and cool double-tracked vocals as they wend their way through stories of loss like "Weary Memory," a look back at a former love that's filled with the ache of quiet despair or "Upward over the Mountain," a deceptively poignant letter to mom. The ambiguity in the songs adds to their haunting quality; is the "baby" Beam sings to in "Bird Stealing Bread" another lost love or his own child? Is "Muddy Hymnal" about the discovery of a body or merely a missing person found sleeping? The gentle music might lull you into drowsiness, but the sharp undercurrents in the lyrics are guaranteed to snap you wide awake.