IRON & WINE
Light Verse (Sub Pop)
What is left to say about Iron & Wine, Sam Beam’s project, sometimes solo, often with a revolving cast of musicians? Light Verse, his seventh album, is yet another gorgeous, life-affirming, beautiful suite of timeless music, starting with the elegiac You Never Know, nailing the funky West Coast 70s vibe on Anyone’s Game, and forging a classic countrified duet with Fiona Apple on All In Good Time.
Taken By Surprise is a heartbreaking ballad to bring a tear to the eye. Simultaneously intimate and widescreen, Light Verse bridges the front porch acoustic poetry of Beam’s earliest work with the latter period of adventurous genre-hopping mastery. Bag Of Cats, Sweet Talk and Cutting It Close are fine examples: on the latter, a freewheeling guitar melody builds into a joyous swell as piano, banjo and slide guitar all join in, following the salty lyric “Long lost friend of mine / I know we only fucked a couple of times…” This, on the other hand, is an album you’ll be wedded to for life.
words CHRIS SEAL
