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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Iron & Wine’s “Beast Epic”

With 2011’s Kiss Each Other Clean and 2013’s Ghost On Ghost, Iron & Wine albums seemed to be on an expansion trajectory, adding orchestration, lengthier instrumental passages and deeper textures to Sam Beam’s poetic, gentle folk songs. Since then, Beam, who uses the Iron & Wine moniker whether recording solo or with a band, has kept busy, releasing a set of early archival material and two duets albums (one of covers with Ben Bridwell of Band Of Horses and one with Jesca Hoop) and co-producing and playing/singing on Tift Merritt’s Stitch Of The World. (All are worth hearing.)

Beast Epic is the sixth Iron & Wine LP, and while it’s not a return to the stark folk of The Creek Drank The Cradle, it does dial back on the density of the arrangements, with the focus on Beam’s acoustic guitar laced with acoustic bass, light piano and an occasional cello. The tone is Nick Drake-like, but not, as is too often the case when artists go for this sound, Nick Drake-lite. It’s as if Beam took the lessons in complex arrangements learned from Ghost On Ghost but stripped them to their spacious essence.

On Beast Epic, the mood is tender even when the lyrics are caustic. “Some call it talking blues/Some call it bitter truth/Some call it getting even in a song,” Beam sings softly on “Bitter Truth,” which also contains a Dylan-worthy putdown: “You better love yourself/’Cause I’ve tried.” This being an Iron & Wine record, the 11 songs (in 36 minutes) have a thematic unity: References to dissolving relationships, to birds, to sunsets and to singing recur, as do a few Christian ones (although not as many as in the past). And there’s unmitigated tenderness, too: “For all the love you’ve left behind, you can have mine,” sings Beam on “Call It Dreaming.”

Although Beast Epic does not broadcast its complexity and depth as with some past Iron & Wine efforts, it’s still lovely, dark and deep.

Steve Klinge