From the ACL Taping Program on September 16, 2008:
For decades, Aimee Mann has been known as one of the top songwriters in contemporary music. Mann frequently pairs the bleakest of poetry with soaring, infectious melodies for emotionally explosive tunes that have won her numerous awards and fans. With her witty lyrics critics report that "no one surpasses her as a master of poetic regret." (All Music Guide).
The Virginia-born, Berklee School of Music-trained musician had a hit in the '80s with her band 'til Tuesday's debut single "Voices Carry," but it's her journey as a solo artist that's ultimately gained the most attention. After 1993's Whatever and 1995's I'm With Stupid, her first two solo albums attracted reams of critical acclaim but few sales, Mann left the major label system behind for good.
Befriending film director Paul Thomas Anderson, she made significant contributions to his infamous movie Magnolia, including the Grammy- and Oscar-nominated "Save Me." The companion release to the Magnolia soundtrack, Bachelor No. 2, was an "emotion-evoking masterpiece" (Ink Blog Magazine) of a "genuinely winning collection of sublime, old-school pop" (Entertainment Weekly). This release was followed by 2002's Lost in Space, 2005's The Forgotten Arm and 2006's Christmas CD, Another Drifter in the Snow.
Her newest release, @#%&*! Smilers, is being hailed as her "most compelling album to date" (Billboard). Mojo wrote, "Smilers is a masterpiece from a songwriter who's quietly chronicling the blanched last days of a sunshine empire."
"I‚ve always been fascinated with eccentric personalities," Mann said. "When I write about them - the narcissists, performers, eccentrics, know-it-alls - it helps me recognize some truths about the world and about myself."
From the ACL Taping Program on August 27, 2008:
Filtering old-fashioned, song-based folk rock through an indie rock lens, Iron and Wine has in the last half decade become one of the most acclaimed and beloved outfits in contemporary music. It is Austin-based songwriter Sam Beam’s “delicate delivery of durable tunes” (Rolling Stone) that creates music that is “subtle, surprising and utterly absorbing” (Q Magazine).
Iron and Wine began releasing music in 2002 and each subsequent CD has earned even more critical praise than the last. The band’s debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, was called “fresh and invigorating” by Paste. Of 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days, Pitchfork wrote “Beam’s freshly veiled lyrics have simply pushed Iron and Wine toward more subversive levels of storytelling.” Billboard wrote 2005’s
Woman King EP “hints at a more complex approach to songwriting without abandoning the qualities that made us pay attention in the first place.”
Iron and Wine’s newest release, 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog is being hailed as Beam’s most ambitious, accomplished and satisfying recording to date. Rolling Stone gave The Shepherd’s Dog three and a half stars and wrote Beam “brings the blood, instrumental colors and quirky but fluid arrangements that make explicit the worry and wounds running red in his Southern-gothic stories and dead-love letters.”
Beam said his inspiration for the cathartic songwriting on The Shepherd’s Dog came in part from Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones, an album where Waits forged a new musical language for himself. While sounding nothing like Waits’ 1983 release, The Shepherd’s Dog succeeds in accomplishing a similar recasting of the artist’s musical intentions. “I just try to use my own life to build a human song: something that people can relate to in some way,” Beam said.
