Iron & Wine: So Busy And Yet So Unhurried, You Wait For Him
Dec 3, 2007
Words by Joel Minor
Illustration by Catherine Maldonado
Some artists, you love how they change, while other artists, it’s heartbreaking to you when they do. The best of them, though, effortlessly use their mystic tricks to invoke change and same to heartening effect. You want to invite the artist in, when he comes knocking again, with the sense that though dressed differently he will maintain his prophetic claim. Ideally, he visits at dawn or at dusk, when you can watch at the window his approach while noticing your own preparation expression in the reflection.
There is no question, Sam Beam is again full of narrative, and every phrase is worth his breathy recounting. In this respect he is blessedly the same, whispering his intricate tales full of familiar particulars interacting in strange but intriguing ways. The kind of tales in which you could find small revelation in a hundred different places. It is the medium of his message that has, not so much changed, but continued a stretched and filled-out progression. It is in this development that _The Shepherd’s Dog_ tempts the most attention to his return, and to the listener’s readiness to host him.
Because he’s brought quite a few friends with him this time, and they’re here to raid every musical instrument and effect you have stashed inside your home, with maybe a sample or two thrown in for good measure. Nothing extraordinary for playing folk music these days. Nothing that would stump the latest incarnation of Iron & Wine; indeed, only everything needed to mix up some new mystic tricks.
They start with a steady, clacking, cranking prelude, sounding like they’re coming through an old radio or a jack-in-the-box, as if to tease the inevitable critics of advancement. Then they spring full-band, full-bore into the opening song, making a statement with every carefree instrument joining in, that they’re not here to requite endless affection of past form. What wonder, then, when the first line comes, in that unmistakable, hushed tone: "Love was a promise made of smoke in a frozen copse of trees." Nothing will be staid here. Nothing will be safe from variation. Not even love.
You already knew Sam Beam was a songwriter on par with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, but it quickly becomes apparent when listening to _The Shepherd’s Dog_ that he’s tapped into the same instrumental magic that infused Bob’s _Basement Tapes_ and Van’s _Astral Weeks_ -- that is, an ensemble camaraderie and a sense of improvisation. The music is dense but varied, the effect of flying over an endless variety of landscapes, or staying still and reveling in the countless species active and interacting all around you.
Space is given to chatter and jam, and merge, allowing the just-as-busy lyrics a chance to sink in a bit. Those looking for more calm, for those quiet, spine-tingling ditties like "Bird Stealing Bread" or "Fever Dream," may find what they are looking for in "Love Song of the Buzzard," "Resurrection Fern," and "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," relatively minimally adorned. Iron & Wine’s tried-and-true slide guitar can still be heard too, here and there, accented and answered by accordion, organ, pedal steel.
The lyrical characters are just as diverse: fathers, sons, daughters, mothers; Biblical protagonists and antagonists; and in the case of "White Tooth Man," a plain clothes cop, a beauty queen, an Indian chief, the holy ghost, and a myriad of others, packed into four minutes of taut, peculiar storytelling, as if straight from the mind of a mid-Sixties (or mid-sixties, for that matter) Dylan.
Throughout, it’s a steady stream of said characters, talking, interacting, finding their way amid pagan angels and God circling above the world. As with the music, you don’t try to keep up with too much at once, but are open for any number of pregnant moments to strike you in any given listen. As with proper prayer or meditation, you don’t attempt to detain the unknown, even as you seek to attain it, but only, always remain receptive to the little ways the infinite becomes identity, and vice versa.
Enough recurrences of dogs, birds, guns, cars, boys with coins, by the last song, make you feel there actually is a glue -- invisible, like all the strongest adherents -- holding the twelve tales together. You might notice this, if you’re not overtaken by the soft falsetto, singing the chorus, then sighing and multiplying into a crescendo conclusion, driven by a tinkling piano, organ, and, is that a French horn quietly humming below?
Although you heard precursors in _Woman King_ and _In the Reins_, you weren’t expecting such a variety of activity from Iron & Wine, equal parts strung-out Sly Stone and celebrative Sufjan Stevens. But as before, the rhythmic and rhyming remnants promise to reappear randomly in the passing days, adding absurdity and sense at their will. You wonder how he can sound so busy but unhurried, so particular but inclusive.
By reflecting the moments, you answer yourself, one never like another and each open for interpretation. The light and dark start mingling again, merging one into the other, you don’t know whether dawn or dusk, but you are at the window watching him go like when he came, and you see yourself stay, abstractly changed, longing to be forever thus on the cusp.
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