When it was announced towards the end of last year that Sam Beam had left influential independent record label Sub Pop and signed with Warner Brothers Records in the United States and 4AD for the rest of the world, I’m sure there were Iron & Wine fans who groaned.
Much attention is paid to an indie artist’s first album after a move to a major label. Will the resulting album be a poppier, more commercial recording that forsakes the nuances of his sound to keep the executives at the major label happy?
Often this is just a knee-jerk reaction from fans who don’t want an artist to change (read: become more popular), but one has to ask how one can expect him to stay relevant if he is not allowed the space to experiment and grow?
Luckily, with Beam this does not seem to be a problem.
Beam showed with 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog that he was not going to shy away from the opportunity to push his music into richer, more layered directions, eschewing the gentle folk whispers of his 2002 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, and 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days, which both owed a lot to the work of Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith.
New sound
The first hint that Beam was looking to push his songs in new directions came with the 2005 EP Women King, the first Iron & Wine recording to feature full-band versions of Beam’s songs. This was followed by the In the Reins EP on which Beam hooked up with Arizona alt-country act Calexico to flesh out his songs.
These two EPs were the perfect signifiers to where Beam was heading and by the time The Shepherd’s Dog hit the shelves in 2007 his fans were well on board with his new sound.
Of course, it helped that The Shepherd’s Dog was easily one of the best albums of the past decade.
And ultimately that’s what makes assessing Beam’s new offering, Kiss Each Other Clean, so damn difficult.
Besides a handful of albums recorded between 2000 and 2009, almost all of that decade’s output would come up short when compared with The Shepherd’s Dog. So what real chance does Kiss Each Other Clean stand?
The brass tacks of the matter is that Kiss Each Other Clean is a great little album on which Beam pushes his songs into new sonic territory, but it is nowhere near as good as his last one and some fans are going to be left somewhat disappointed.
But, once you can let go of the weight of expectation that The Shepherd’s Dog created, you will discover a slick album of great new songs that really shows Beam extending himself musically, which is something that should be applauded.
Influence from the 1970s
The most obvious changes to the Iron & Wine sound are the introduction of electronic funk rhythms to some tracks, as well as the use of horns that punctuate some of the new songs.
Ultimately, it sounds as if Beam has been listening to a ton of 1970s pop and rock records. While listening through Kiss Each Other Clean references such as Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Little Feat sprung to mind, not to mention the overwhelming influence of Stevie Wonder (1972’s Talking Book and 1973’s Innervisions).
Beam hinted at this direction during an interview with Spin magazine in October last year, claiming that the new album was ‘more of a focused pop record”.
‘It sounds like the music people heard in their parents’ car growing up — that early-to-mid-1970s FM radio-friendly music,” he said.
But while Beam may have been aiming for a pop record, what we get is something else entirely. That’s the joy of music.
Radiohead aimed for the Talking Head’s Remain in Light and we got Kid A and who’s complaining?
Kiss Each Other Clean is not a pop record and there is much to love on it, particularly the new songs such as Big Burned Hand and Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me, on which the new horn-laden metallic funk sound is pulled off
with aplomb.
In fact, the former reminds me of the 2002 album In Our Gun, which was recorded by Southport’s indie-rock band Gomez.
In Our Gun showed Gomez branching off into a more layered electronic sound, much like Kiss Each Other Clean. However, it was also probably the last great album that the Southport five-piece recorded. Let’s hope this is not the case with Iron & Wine.
Apart from the two tracks already mentioned, standout songs include the proggy Rabbit Will Run, the doo-wop styled folk of Half Moon and the harmony-drenched Glad Man Singing.
One inexplicable decision is that Summer in Savannah, the B-side to lead single Walking Far from Home, was not included on the album, although it is one of the best of this new batch of songs Beam has recorded. But this is a small quibble.
It is clear that Beam has pushed himself on Kiss Each Other Clean. Sometimes he may have pushed things too far because a few of the songs don’t quite work, but the ones that do are so damn gorgeous that they make up for any faults the album has.
Kiss Each Other Clean may not be an instant classic like The Shepherd’s Dog, but my guess is that if you stick with it in 2011 you may find as the end of the year comes round that these songs have stayed with you a lot longer than you may have thought possible.