Using my time machine, I’ve been visiting the future and listening to the new Iron and Wine album The Shepherd’s Dog. It’s due to be released at the end of September. After the first few listens, I thought to myself “I’m going to have to listen to this a lot more before forming an opinion on it”, but since bandwidth is cheap and so are opinions, here are some first impressions.
The new record is a lot more complex than previous I&W recordings, from the ground up. On earlier releases, most of the songs were built around Sam Beam’s voice and guitar - other instruments usually only serving as ornamentation. This time around, it feels like most of the songs were written with fuller arrangements in mind - there are more instruments, more harmonies, and fewer songs driven mainly by the acoustic guitar line. In a way, then, it’s similar to Wilco’s recent album Sky Blue Sky - the songs are less simple to break down to just “main songwriter brings in a song, other people add their parts on top”. This doesn’t necessarily make for a better album - it certainly didn’t for Wilco, but that’s another post.
In Iron and Wine’s case though, it makes for a more varied listening experience. Previous I&W albums were often fairly monochromatic - lots of slow, whispery songs, occasionally interspersed with swampy stompers. They’re great albums, because the songs are usually gorgeous, but it does seem that the band has been consciously trying to break out of its mold - first with Woman King and now with The Shepherd’s Dog. I’m genuinely curious whether the change has anything to do with the band’s increasing popularity and the difficulty of playing quiet acoustic numbers to festival crowds, or just continued artistic development.
One more thing. The first time I heard Our Endless Numbered Days, I knew immediately it was an album I’d listen to obsessively. That wasn’t the case with this one - it may grow on me, but it didn’t strike me at the gut level in the same way. Until I got to the last song.
“Flightless Bird, American Mouth” arrives at the end of the album like an afterthought, but it’s beautiful, and completely captures what makes this band so great. It’s a classic Iron and Wine song, in the sense that it brings together a lot of the common thematic and aural elements of the bands prior work, but expands on it with the broader palette of the new album at the same time.
It would almost be self-parody if it wasn’t so good: a simple chord progression (I hear D-Bm-G-A, I-vi-IV-V), finger-picked, whispery harmonized vocals, lightly ornamented first with accordion, then with a fuller band. Classic Sam Beam lyrics too: nothing too specific, just a misty, beautiful nostalgia. Here’s a clip of Sam Beam performing it solo, this recording doesn’t really do the album version justice, but it’s pretty good all the same.
Someone once told me that I could get nostalgic about things that happened five minutes previously, and that’s probably a part of why I like Iron and Wine so much. But I don’t think it’s about wanting to live in the past. It’s about remembering all the beautiful things you’ve passed along the way, carrying them with you, and thinking about how much wonder there is in the world.
The new record is a lot more complex than previous I&W recordings, from the ground up. On earlier releases, most of the songs were built around Sam Beam’s voice and guitar - other instruments usually only serving as ornamentation. This time around, it feels like most of the songs were written with fuller arrangements in mind - there are more instruments, more harmonies, and fewer songs driven mainly by the acoustic guitar line. In a way, then, it’s similar to Wilco’s recent album Sky Blue Sky - the songs are less simple to break down to just “main songwriter brings in a song, other people add their parts on top”. This doesn’t necessarily make for a better album - it certainly didn’t for Wilco, but that’s another post.
In Iron and Wine’s case though, it makes for a more varied listening experience. Previous I&W albums were often fairly monochromatic - lots of slow, whispery songs, occasionally interspersed with swampy stompers. They’re great albums, because the songs are usually gorgeous, but it does seem that the band has been consciously trying to break out of its mold - first with Woman King and now with The Shepherd’s Dog. I’m genuinely curious whether the change has anything to do with the band’s increasing popularity and the difficulty of playing quiet acoustic numbers to festival crowds, or just continued artistic development.
One more thing. The first time I heard Our Endless Numbered Days, I knew immediately it was an album I’d listen to obsessively. That wasn’t the case with this one - it may grow on me, but it didn’t strike me at the gut level in the same way. Until I got to the last song.
“Flightless Bird, American Mouth” arrives at the end of the album like an afterthought, but it’s beautiful, and completely captures what makes this band so great. It’s a classic Iron and Wine song, in the sense that it brings together a lot of the common thematic and aural elements of the bands prior work, but expands on it with the broader palette of the new album at the same time.
It would almost be self-parody if it wasn’t so good: a simple chord progression (I hear D-Bm-G-A, I-vi-IV-V), finger-picked, whispery harmonized vocals, lightly ornamented first with accordion, then with a fuller band. Classic Sam Beam lyrics too: nothing too specific, just a misty, beautiful nostalgia. Here’s a clip of Sam Beam performing it solo, this recording doesn’t really do the album version justice, but it’s pretty good all the same.
Someone once told me that I could get nostalgic about things that happened five minutes previously, and that’s probably a part of why I like Iron and Wine so much. But I don’t think it’s about wanting to live in the past. It’s about remembering all the beautiful things you’ve passed along the way, carrying them with you, and thinking about how much wonder there is in the world.
1 comment:
I completely agree to your reaction to Our Endless Numbered Days! It filled the quiet/sad music void for me after the Kings of Convenience came out with their second, much too upbeat album. It's sad to hear that I&W may be headed the same way... I'll go check my mailbox for my own personal time machine to check it out (thanks!).
T
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