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Behind The Music - Iron & Wine

Hi-de-ho, neighbour. Iron And Wine here. Look at the fucking state of me.

Hi-de-ho, neighbour. Iron And Wine here. Look at the fucking state of me. You wouldn’t think it to look at all the hair that surrounds my totes inscrutable face, but I’m actually quite a successful guy. I used to be a professor of film, and I’m the father of five healthy, flax-haired kids who undoubtedly make better macaroni paintings than your weedy, soot-choked urban scrotes could ever hope to knock together. On top of that, I’ve a dedicated hardcore fanbase of 300 or so self-righteous middle-class white people, who know me as the beard guy who does the countrified Southern Gothic folk thing but who isn’t Castanets. I’ve had a few critically-lauded albums, the last of which was a vague political snook cocked the way of Dubya’s re-election. I’m basically the one the undergrads come to when Colin Meloy just isn’t the right vibe for the recycling drive.

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Or maybe you’re older. Perhaps you’ve had enough of blasting Fleet Foxes from the Prius stereo all the time, or maybe Bon Iver’s wordless, emotive squeals are too distracting for an afternoon set aside for Naomi Klein (<3) on the Kindle (<3<3). When all else fails, people know who to turn to – the guy whose cover version of “Such Great Heights” was the one featured in Garden State. That, friends, is the US indie equivalent of winning the Double. When was that shit released? My IMDbPro account says: ‘2004′. So I’m basically Arsenal. I’m basically Invincible. I’m ‘a bird in a bird in a bird’. When it comes to that genre once known as ‘Pitchfolk’ – what the Washington Post described as “music for reducing your blood pressure while raising your IQ” – I’m fucking it.

So, on the back of all this being awesome, I’ve done what all my great, progressive countercultural heroes did: the sell-out thing. Finally left the lank-haired losers at Sub Pop behind, signed to a major and ‘gone hi-fi’. And when I say ‘hi-fi’, I really do mean the polished wood cabinet speakers and Denon multi-unit stereo your dad could only afford once he was too old to care about music any more. My new album is the dusted-off sound of the 90s dinner table turntable; where sax-blown, marimba-riddled rock was as essential as the Marie Rose dressing on one’s prawns and the opening strains of the Baywatch theme seeping through from the TV next door.

Of course, my hardcore fans – the most virulently non-committal and politically malleable – are divided over whether or not this is ‘a good thing’. I guess I should have known that somewhere amid my predominantly liberal fanbase lurked a few super-conservative sorts who’d think that occasionally sounding like Toto was a bridge too far, but it’s a real pity – because while most of my record is just the same old Bon Foxes bullsh, when I stray from that template I become surprisingly interesting. Like on “Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me” –  a genuine post-punk, saxophone-snotty-snarler. James Chance you ain’t got no chance!

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to squeeze in plenty of stuff for everyone who likes things best when they’re boring and trite. Honestly – it doesn’t even seem to matter what I scribble down. A certain class of critic just seems pathologically determined to laud me for it. Last week The Independent decided to illustrate just how gnomishly perceptive I am (in their – COUGH – five-star review) by quoting the line: “As far as I can tell/the night won’t compensate the blind”. I just can’t lose with these people. On “Glad Man Singing”, I threw in the world’s biggest clunker: “Sad man knocking on a chapel door/and a burned out boat called ‘Trial By Fire’”. Yet still they lauded. In short, the selfsame people who spent most of last week shitting all over White Lies for coming up with lines like: “You were crying on the shoulders of the men in the shadows/Whoever taught you to sell your sex like that?” will happily take my: “A pig has to lay in its piss” as a sign of ‘dew-eyed wonderment’ or ‘resigned world-weariness’ or whatever.

You forget that folk has special rules. Folk derives its power from tradition. Tradition is a block of wood hewn down, a deliberate narrowing of the gene pool. Thus, in folk, trite statements of the obvious are celebrated in much the same way as non-deformed babies are celebrated by Mormons. As long as I play into their hands and make it obvious I’m ‘folk’, people allow my basic artificiality to go unchallenged. White Lies? They’ll get still beaten to a bloody pulp for being ‘inauthentic’. My advice to young Messrs Cave, McVeigh and Haircut? GROW A FUCKING BEARD. And get a backpack. And maybe a North Face windcheater.Maybe that way you’ll make it big in The Independent. AS RELAYED TO GAVIN HAYNES