Iron and Wine

Picture an eccentric street fete filled with bhangra belly dancers, tribal percussionists and string virtuosos; a gala of jovial opuses, Simon and Garfunkel folk and seductive cascades of banjos, keyboards and clapping hands. Wait, there's more. Jam sessions with accordions, slide guitar, piano, synths, shakers, harmonica... get the idea? The Shepherd's Dog is complex, yes, but the beguiling lo-fi mellowness that is Iron and Wine's core is still intact. The melancholy and mystique in Sam Beam's lullaby croons are never overpowered. This is a global affair worth checking out.

Singer-songwriter Sam Beam has gradually added rhythm and instruments to his gravitas
across his previous records as Iron and Wine. On this third album, Beam finally brings the
blood, instrumental colors and quirky but fluid arrangements that make explicit the worry
and wounds running red in his Southern-gothic stories and dead-love letters. Slide guitars
and buzzing sitars hang like spider's silk from "White Tooth Man." In "Carousel," B... More >