Iron &; Wine
Kiss Each Other Clean
[Warner]
Rating: 8.0/10
(This review originally appeared on Audiosuede)
Hit the jump for the review.
It’s important to remember that this wasn’t mandated. Before he was an indie folk superstar, Sam Beam just used to be a professor of cinematography in Florida. A dude who picked up a four track and recorded some beautifully contemplative tracks that were given to a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy until someone from Sub Pop heard it and then– bam– Beam had a nationally acclaimed record called The Creek Drank the Cradle. Even then, it wasn’t really until the Woman King EP that people really got a sense that, well damn, this guy was here to stay. Even when his tracks lacked the simple surprise of his early material, it was far from formulaic, making even his lows much better than many other artists’ most solid efforts. Kiss Each Other Clean, the latest Sam Beam release, marks both an excellent continuation of Beam’s showcase of talents and an engaging new direction for an artist who had oft been painted into a corner.
Hearing the name Iron & Wine, the most natural sonic touchpoints that come to mind include Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith, and Neil Young, with the way he used acoustic guitars to weave soft, heartfelt soundscapes, patiently decorated with dollops of banjo and strings. All of those artists that influenced Beam at one point made a musical turn, Young and Dylan going electric, Smith going eclectic. On Kiss Each Other Clean, Beam does both, spiraling off into different directions that were only hinted at on The Shepherd’s Dog, appeasing his obvious thirst for new directions. Check out the devastatingly gorgeous opening track “Walking Far From Home,” which switches gears at least four times, ratcheting up the emotional intensity with each change, or the scattershot instrumentation of “Monkeys Uptown,” which sounds as divided as its character feels.
Of course, Beam still has an indefinable it factor when it comes to his country-folk wheelhouse. “Half Moon” is a perfect example, where a rustic guitar riff and ramshackle shuffle form the backbone of some soaring vocal melodies and crystalline slide guitars. Later, “Godless Brother In Love” finds Beam and some tasteful vocal reverb taking the closest thing to a ballad that Iron & Wine has ever released and straight knocking it out of the park, especially when Beam syncopates the words in the chorus.
But Kiss Each Other Clean is an album about new directions for Beam, and building off of the new layers he built onto his solid foundation over his last LP. The experimentation is strong for the most part, but I’ll admit that it can occasionally feel inexplicable. I still don’t understand the Santana-esque breakdown that closes “Rabbit Will Run,” while at points “Monkeys Uptown” feels aimless, and the mish mash that is “Big Burned Hand” tries to rock gospel, spaceship funk, and collage pop, only to come out of the oven sounding a big half baked.
Still, those moments are nothing compared to the wealth of interesting new material here. “Walking Far From Home” alone has enough material in it to play with for another two or three albums and still remain incredibly interesting, and “Glad Man Singing” is a spectacular synthesis of all of the album’s tones and timbres. And maybe the biggest new strength of Beam’s is his taste for excellent backing vocals; listen to any track on this record and you’ll notice the gentile, distant vocals bring an entirely new element to even the traditional Iron & Wine moments. And all of this, the experimentation, the classic folk-rock heroism, the new vocal affinities, all coalesce on the seven-minute closer “Your Fake Name is Good Enough For Me,” where 70s AM radio pop gives way to an epic slow-build of a coda, where guitars and saxophones squeal, thick layers of vocals reach toward the sky, and Beam stands above it all. “We will become a whisper and a shout,” Beam sings, justifying just how sure we are now in how well he can pull off both.
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