Premature Evaluation: Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
If you've never seen Iron & Wine live, Sam Beam's following may come as a surprise. Everybody knows the Floridian sports a big old beard. It always seemed more rural South (or Lungfish, maybe) than something to inspire Deadheads to Volkswagen-surf, but watching dozens of kids hippie dancing to "On Your Wings" and "Jesus The Mexican Boy" can retroactively color Beam's output and those follicles: A "Cheeseburger In Paradise" whispers silently through "Someday The Waves," junkyard percussion becomes a drum circle in "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven," the evocative "fuck the man" graffiti in "The Trapeze Swinger" shifts into a bong-fisted slogan. In this framework, Shepherd's Dog is Iron & Wine's jam record: Sam’s stuff never sounded so big, so ready to shift into a 20-minute "Love And Some Verses." Outside of the punch line –- hippie jokes aside, all due reverence in place -– Beam's created his most brilliant collection to date.
No doubt when Iron & Wine went electric on the Woman King EP a bit of the naked, one-guy-in-his-bedroom intimacy was lost. Shepherd's Dog welcomes an even fuller sound. Here, though, Beam's maintained an essential, muddy ambiance: No backward guitar fizzle, accordion, block percussion, piano, or incidental segments (pedal steel, brass, harmonica, synth notes/electro drums, and varieties of feedback stitching tracks together) can obscure his heart, or his poetry. Calexico add dub-like diminishes to "Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)." The excellent "Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car"' has an upbeat, full-band swing with a boogie piano and scissoring bows. In "Carousel" a crackhead builds a boat, dogs eat snow and Beam, singing through vibrato, sounds like Neil Young underwater. The shuffling, bluesy, organ-tinged "Lovesong Of The Buzzard" reminds us (in the fading afternoon) that "no one is the savior they would like to be" and finds "a tattoo of a flower on a broken wrist." In "House By The Sea" the protagonist's "been given to run with limp" and has been "changing the sound of [his] name."
Still, the most breathtakingly immediate tracks are those when the sound's most naked. In "Resurrection Fern," shaker and guitars accompanying Beam, a sing-song vocal line evokes a cornfield scene, a lifetime of "us," and a "fallen house across the way" with novelistic (or at least Carver-esque) detail: "We'll undress besides the ashes of the fire / Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire / All the more a pair of underwater pearls / Than the oak tree and its resurrection fern." Or, the accordion accented, falsetto-tinged finale "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," which traces a "quick wet boy / diving too deep for coins" to his post-fair existence as a "fat house cat / cursing [his] sore blunt tongue." The spare innocence-and-experience storyline functions as an epiphany much like Elliott Smith's "Say Yes" at the end of Either/Or, albeit with a jammier outro. It's no accident we're namedropping such a biggie, arguably Smith's best: Shepherd's Dog sounds like a bona fide classic.
The LP is out this September on Sub Pop.
Posted at 3:02 PM in Album Art, Premature Evaluation
Tags: Iron And Wine
i really wasn't a fan of Woman King, but i love this new record.
not as much as you guys do, clearly, but i've never seen Beam live so the Dead comparisons are lost on me.
Score = 0
*goes and downloads*
Score = 0
Yeah, this will make me wait until September to buy the album.
Score = 0
I find this record..boring. Yeah, it has much better production quality and a wide variety of instruments, but it just sounds uninspired to me.
His older stuff is gold, though.
Score = 0
yea it's really that good. Woman King was kind of lost on me, but Our Endless Number Days, the Calexico collab, and creek drank the cradle cemented him as the real deal, and this only adds to it. "flightless bird, american mouth" is spectacular
Score = 0
Can't find it anywhere. Maybe that's a good thing...
Score = 0
i saw him with calexico a while back. he's intolerably boring live. dude has the audacity to stretch out songs that are already too long by adding humming verses! comparisons to elliott smith are far too generous.
Score = 0
I love this album so hard; I can't stop listening to it.
Score = 0
I saw Sam Beam in Milwaukee back in March, and most of his set was off of this album. I had been waiting for it to leak ever since!
When I heard it had leaked, I just about had an orgasm.
He's amazing live, and this record is just wonderful. I'd say experience it now, and definitely buy it when it comes out in September.
Score = 0
Am I the only one who can't find this on any of the torrent sites?
Score = 0
brilliant.
Score = 0
I saw him a few years ago and really enjoyed his set, extra instruments and all.
Looking forward to this one.
Score = 0
i've only listened to this twice through but I can't say it's impressed me much. After Our Endless Numbered Days (a classic), this new style doesn't stand too well.
Score = 0
i cant find it anywhere either...
but i will say that he is one of the best live performers i have seen. i saw I&W at sasquatch 06 and he was able to stop the entire festival dead in its tracks when he ended his set with "the trapeze swinger." it was a breathtaking set and i can't wait until he tours for this album!
how come all the cool kids know the right torrent sites to look for?!?!
Score = 0
would someone please direct me to where i can download this album?!
Score = 0
i found it on soulseek, and it's awesome
Score = 0