No one's ever been voted Least Likely To Lead An
11-Piece Band, but if such an honor had been bestowed 12 years ago, Sam Beam
would've been a frontrunner. A shy, prolifically bearded academic, Beam started
out making whisper-quiet bedroom recordings — just his voice and an acoustic
guitar, issuing bleakly poignant songs about troubled lives and worried minds.
But ever since his 2001 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle,
Beam has piled on accouterments gradually, as he's slowly and subtly built his
sound into something lavish and even orchestral in scope.
Recording
and touring as Iron and Wine, Beam
now presides over arrangements springy and three-dimensional enough to
accommodate a horn section — and yet he still finds a way to wrap his agreeably
soft voice around thematically weighty material. For all its rich, Technicolor
brightness, Iron and Wine's new Ghost on Ghost retains the capacity to burrow
knowingly into bleak Wisconsin winters ("Winter Prayers") with an
acute understanding of loneliness and alienation. Even amid cheery oohs and
ahhs, "The Desert Babbler" finds Beam warning wearily,
"California's gonna kill you soon."
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