Iron & Wine's Sam Beam and the members of Calexico convened in December 2004 at Calexico's home base of Wavelab Studios in Tucson, Arizona. The idea of working together had been tossed around for over three years, though neither bands' schedule loaned itself into making it a reality until then. The resulting session "In the Reins", is a mini-album that is a truly harmonious affair sure to satisfy fans of both bands. The seven tracks are Sam Beam originals and were fleshed out by the full Calexico band. The record also features newcomer Natalie Wyants on vocals, Salvador Duran, a local fixture of the Tucson Flamenco scene, on vocals and Botas. Of course no Wavelab experience would be complete without the appearance of Nick Luca (NL Trio/John Doe Band) and Craig Schumacher, both of whom contributed to the record in the form of engineering and performance.

TRACK LISTING

He Lays In The Reins
Prison On Route 41
History Of Lovers
Red Dust
16, Maybe Less
Burn That Broken Bed
Dead Mans Will

Kiss Each Other Clean, Iron & Wine’s fourth full-length record, was originally released in 2011 and came three years after his biggest selling record up to that point, The Shepherd’s Dog. The bands two earlier albums had been sparse, intimate solo affairs that offered no hint of the direction he would take with records three and four. Like The Shepherd’s Dog, Kiss Each Other Clean is layered with textures, poly-rhythmic sounds and a more is more approach.

His lyrics sprung to life in ways initially unimaginable to early fans and critics helping each song tell its story and build to climaxes thru various sounds and editing techniques. However what remained at the core of KEOC, and what fans of the band had come to love, was the song writing and singing of principle songwriter Sam Beam. Beam’s ability to invite you in with his hushed singing tone and knack for a melody remained front and center even in his drive to replicate something in the vein of Waits’.

Swordfishtormbones Principle recording for KEOC was at home in Dripping Springs, Texas. After laying down the bulk of the record Beam moved recording to Chicago to work with Brian Deck. A cast of musicians helped Beam find his sound and see his vision for KEOC including Joe Adamik (Califone), Jim Becker (Califone), Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), Stuart Bogie (Antibalas), Rob Burger (Tin Hat Trio), Benny Massarella (Red Red Meat/Califone), Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo) and Matt Lux (Isotope 217).

With KEOC, Beam and company brought in soft rock smoothness, dub reggae textures, and instruments that hadn’t been featured on previous records. The vintage synths on “Monkeys Uptown”, the Stevie Wonder funk on “Big Burned Hand,”, the strum and drang of “Walking Far From Home” all give the otherwise very organic-sounding arrangements a welcome cheesy kick. The record also produced the biggest radio single of the bands career with the vintage AM friendly vibes of “Tree by the River”. It was an adventurous period in the career in Iron & Wine and one in which Beam was defying categorization.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Walking Far From Home
Me And Lazarus
Tree By The River
Monkeys Uptown
Half Moon
Rabbit Will Run

Side B
Godless Brother In Love
Big Burned Hand
Glad Man Singing
Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me

Ghost on Ghost is Iron & Wine’s fifth full-length record and was originally released in 2013. The album found Sam Beam, the band’s principle member, working once again with longtime associate Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Califone). The record marks the last time the two would work together on a journey that began with the bands second record, Endless Numbered Days. It also marked a shift for the two from working in Chicago to setting up in New York City. The idea behind the move was to tap into the creative musical community New York had to offer.

The line-up that helped bring Beam’s vision for Ghost on Ghost to life included a who’s who from the jazz community as well as the deep wells of outside art including Steve Bernstein (Sex Mob/Levon Helm Band), Rob Burger (Tin Hat Trio), Brian Blade, Curtis Fowlkes (The Jazz Passengers), Tony Garnier (Bob Dylan Band), Marika Hughes, Briggan Kraus, Maxim Moston, Tony Scherr (The Lounge Lizards), Doug Wieselman, Kenny Wolleson (Tom Watis/John Zorn) and Anja Wood. The level of talent on Ghost on Ghost far surpassed anything Beam ever imagined when he first began writing songs as Iron and Wine on his four-track.

Upon completing the Ghost on Ghost , Beam jokingly referred to the recording process as “a reward to myself” after years of chasing sounds by himself. Being able have the finest in musicians in New York City perform on the record, elevating these songs into places he never imagined Beam stated, “it was an honor -- really inspiring.”

Beam stated at the time that Ghost on Ghost takes it’s inspiration from records like Nilsson Schmilsson, Ram, Mingus Moves and What’s Going On. The record they all crafted is warm and inviting and was unlike anything up to that point in the Iron & Wine catalog.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Caught In The Briars
The Desert Babbler
Joy
Low Light Buddy Of Mine
Grace For Saints And Ramblers
Grass Windows
Singers And The Endless Song

Side B
Sundown (Back In The Briars)
Winters Prayers
New Mexico’s No Breeze
Lovers’ Revolution
Baby Center Stage

When the pandemic began, and the world shut down, so did the process of creating for Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. In its place was a domesticity that the singer hadn’t felt in a long time, and although it was filled with many rewards, making music was not one of them. Reflecting on that time;

Beam notes:
“I feel blessed and grateful that I and most of my friends and family made it through the pandemic relatively unscathed compared to so many others, but it completely paralyzed the songwriter in me. The last thing I wanted to write about was COVID, and yet every moment I sat with my pen, it lingered around the edges and wouldn’t leave. This lasted for over two years.” The journey back began with a recording session in Memphis to record a handful of Lori McKenna tracks for the EP Lori with friend and producer Matt Ross-Spang. The cathartic experience reconnected Beam with his love for making music, and soon enough the paralysis had passed, and he was finishing lyrics and booking studio time for what would become Light Verse. Light Verse was recorded with engineer and mixer Dave Way at his studio Waystation high up in Laurel Canyon (with an additional session at Silent Zoo Studio with a 24-piece orchestra), with a host of talented musicians joining Beam: Tyler Chester, Sebastian Steinberg, David Garza, Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, Kyle Crane, and Paul Cartwright. And, Fiona Apple joined Beam on vocals for the duet “All In Good Time.” Beam lyrically once again takes focus on a series of both fictional and personal insights, filled with desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, offering promise and a dose of heartache, tears and laughter, life and love. Taking stock in the album’s title, he jokes, “Light verse is a form of poetry about playful themes that often uses nonsense and wordplay, and it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album!…. Just kidding….”

While true this may be Iron & Wine’s most playful record, Beam says the title mostly reflects the way the songs were born with joy after the heaviness and anxiety of the pandemic. Where recent records like Beast Epic or Weed Garden gave air to the disquiet of middle-aged frailty and brokenness, these songs trade that for the focus acceptance can bring. Moment by moment, they delight in being pointed or silly (or both) and attempt beauty over prettiness.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sam Beam presents a tenderly melodic suite of swinging symphonies and off-kilter jangle. Pieces like the enthralling opener 'You Never Know' are both wonderfully syncopated and display Sam's ability to switch from breezy to near-chaotic in the blink of an eye, without ever breaking the listening spell. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Never Know
2. Anyone's Game
3. All In Good Time
4. Cutting It Close
5. Taken By Surprise
6. Yellow Jacket
7. Sweet Talk
8. Tears That Don't Matter
9. Bag Of Cats
10. Angels Go Home

Iron & Wine follow up their 2018 Grammy-nominated full-length Beast Epic with Weed Garden, a collection of material that began about three years ago. The six-song EP features songs that were part of the writing phase for Beast Epic, but went unfinished. They were part of a larger narrative for principal songwriter Sam Beam, who ran out of time to get them where they needed to be for inclusion on Beast Epic. Weed Garden also includes the fan favorite “Waves of Galveston.”

While on tour last fall, the final pieces of material took shape and a sense of urgency prevailed in bringing these characters full circle. To resolution. To completion. In January, Beam and company hunkered down in Chicago at The Loft recording studio to capture these six songs.  No more, no less.
Weed Garden joins the good company of previous Iron & Wine EP’s – The Sea and Rhythm, Woman King, In the Reins – and in 2018’s attention-span challenged world that's not a bad thing.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: If you've heard Iron & Wine before, you'll be well aware of Mr. Beam's capability for weaving a rich acousticana tapestry, and 'Weed Garden' is exactly that, beautifully played organic instrumentation with a strong melodic sensibility, relaxing and transportative. (Iron &) Wine-not give it a go.

Following 2011’s ‘Kiss Each Other Clean’, which debuted at number two on the US Billboard chart, ‘Ghost On Ghost’ is to be the fifth studio album from Austin-based Sam Beam.

While Rolling Stone said of ‘Kiss Each Other Clean’ that “pop music hadn’t seen anything like it since the heyday of Cat Stevens,” and Pitchfork said it “more closely resembles the lush, gold-toned singer songwriter records of the late 60s and early 70s - ‘Astral Weeks’, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’”, Beam felt it time to move from what he called the “anxious tension” from this record and his previous one (‘The Shepherd’s Dog’). “This record felt like a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few,” he says.

Recorded in New York and produced by Beam’s longtime associate Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Califone, Fruit Bats), helping achieve Beam’s vision were a group of stellar musicians including Rob Burger of Tin Hat Trio, Steve Bernstein, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, and Briggan Krauss of Sex Mob, jazz drummer Brian Blade, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes of The Jazz Passengers, bassist Tony Garnier (Bob Dylan’s band), cellist Marika Hughes, Maxim Moston and Doug Wieselman of Antony And The Johnsons, and Anja Wood. Burger (Tin Hat Trio) has worked with Beam intermittently through the years and handled arrangements for strings and horns on ‘Ghost On Ghost’.

For the album’s cover, Beam, who is also a visual artist, chose an image from the series ‘Private Views’ by noted photographer Barbara Crane.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Another mellow delight from Sam Beam. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

Caught In The Briars
The Desert Babbler
Joy
Low Light Buddy Of Mine
Graces For Saints And Ramblers
Grass Windows
Singers And The Endless Song
Sundown (Back In The Briars)
Winter Prayers
New Mexico’s No Breeze
Lovers’ Revolution
Baby Center Stage

New to 4AD, Iron And Wine deliver the perfect way to start any year.

It’s been over three years since Iron & Wine released "The Shepherd’s Dog", a collection of songs that Sam (Beam) himself described as an attempt to replicate something in the vein of Tom Waits’ "Swordfishtrombones".

While Waits fans might gasp at such a notion, making the kind of records that had brought much of their early successes would have been all too easy and living up to folks expectations never sounded all that interesting to Sam.

After all, the most fascinating journeys are the ones where you have no idea where you’re headed, and that’s what the experience of making the record turned out to be. In the end, they were rewarded with a warm reception from both fans and critics alike.

"Kiss Each Other Clean" is the next logical step and should have been done sooner had life not got in the way. As is well documented, Sam resides outside of Austin, Texas close to the middle of nowhere where he and his wife tend to a rather large homestead.

As one journalist who visited him once said, “he lives exactly as you hoped he would”. Good for us, sometimes difficult for him.

When possible, recording sessions were taking place over the course of 2010 in Chicago with Brian Deck at the helm again as well as a number of familiar names who pop up to contribute musically.

Not one to rest on laurels, "Kiss Each Other Clean" takes off where "The Shepherd’s Dog" left us with layer upon layer, rhythm upon rhythm and of course some acoustic guitar and whispering vocals for good measure. In a recent interview Sam said that the resulting ten tracks make for a “more focused pop record”, albeit with “straight-up jazz, blues and African elements” experimentally thrown in.

If we are to believe Sam on his earlier Waits-ian comparison then it’s safe to say that "Kiss Each Other Clean" could be the second phase in his own trilogy a la "Rain Dogs". One thing is certain, he’s yet to show any sign of letting up.

"Boy With A Coin", the first single to be taken from forthcoming album "The Shepherd's Dog", is darkly playful, tumbling under its cascading melody and backwards guitar textures. A worthy example of the highest standard of songwriting displayed on the rest of the album and marks a departure in style from Beam's previous work, without betraying his blissful Americana roots.