This is easily my favorite Iron & Wine album to date. No question. Unlike Sam Beam’s previous effort, Our Endless Numbered Days, every single song is completely solid, and no less than four are absolutely stellar. No question, I enjoy Beam’s past work a good deal. But, in my opinion, previous Iron & Wine albums have been inconsistent and hit-or-miss.
The album’s sound shows Beam branching out a good deal, and most of the songs feature electric instruments as well as full-band arrangements. Older Iron & Wine fans will probably criticize the once-solo Beam for straying from his roots, but they said the same thing about Dylan when Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited came out. Where are those people now? Eating their words, every one of them.
The best songs are “Lovesong of the Buzzard”, which sounds remarkably like a Sufjan Stevens number, “Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog)”, which is an excellent folk-rock song, and “Peace Beneath the City”, which is a great slow building number. But seriously, the whole record is really excellent.
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