Image from the cover of Chai Chen by Maurice Patton & the Melodians, c. 1970
It was around 2001 when the guys at Sub Pop records first caught wind of Iron & Wine. At the time, it was the name of the solo bedroom recordings made by Sam Beam, a cinematography professor from Florida. Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop liked the whispery folk he heard well enough to contact Beam and ask him for some more stuff. In response, Beam sent him two full CDs of home-recorded songs - Sub Pop made the right call by picking the best ones and releasing them immediately as Iron & Wine's debut album without any additional embellishment. When I heard that album, The Creek Drank the Cradle that year, I remember thinking, "This is the Internet age - the rest of the songs from those demo CDs must be online somewhere." Sure enough - I was able to track down those early Iron & Wine demos and make myself some pretty rough-sounding CDRs that still count among my favorite Iron & Wine "albums".
Most of those demos have been released in some form or other by now, but the best place to find them is on the first CD of Iron & Wine's new 2-CD rarities collection, Around the Well. It sounds kind of stupid to say this about bedroom demos, but the tracks sound a lot better here, and this is how many people like to hear Iron & Wine - it's like Sam Beam is whispering directly into your ear. It sounds kind of creepy when you say it like that, but these recordings have an intimacy that is what drew many people to Iron & Wine in the first place. Weirdly, that feeling seems to have gone from some sectors - a lot of critics are saying, "All these songs sound the same!" about Around the Well, which we could have said about The Creek Drank the Cradle when it came out. We didn't at the time, for whatever reason.
If the old Iron & Wine stuff sounds a little samey to you, the second disc of Around the Well may be the answer. This disc contains more recent non-album tracks, and many of these are studio-recorded with lush arrangements that complement Beam's folky tunes without drowning them (which is what happened to some of the songs on Iron & Wine's last album.) There are a couple weak songs in the middle of the disc - interestingly, they are the most stripped-down of the newer set of songs - but there are a lot of high points. Beam's sister Sarah provides lovely harmonies on "Communion Cups and Someone's Coat", and "Belated Promise Ring" is jaunty folk-pop with a nice bassline. "Serpent Charmer" and "Arms of a Thief" use creepy electronic noises to add a great sense of tension. This variety makes the disc play a lot like a standalone album, and it's among the best that Iron & Wine has released. This is particularly true in the way that the songs build up to the final song, "The Trapeze Singer", a song which proves to be the exception that proves the rule when it comes to ten-minute folk songs. A simple chord progression on acoustic guitar carries the song from start to finish, but the aching melody, evolving arrangement, and soothing backing vocal "oohs" make the song a masterwork in the Iron & Wine discography.
That song is too long to post here, and you really should go out and buy the collection to hear it (or buy the soundtrack to the Topher Grace rom-com In Good Company, where the song first appeared). My other favorite on this collection is "Kingdom of the Animals", one of Iron & Wine's few piano-based songs. The piano is bolstered nicely by wah-wah guitar and pedal steel, and the vocals of Beam and his sister are layered six deep, but in just the right way. The song picks up momentum, and a more country-ish feel, as it goes along, building to a nice big finish. It's funny to think that thousands of American teens are now swooning over Iron & Wine because of their inclusion in the movie Twilight - Sam Beam has come a long way from the day he dropped two CDs of his songs in the mail to Sub Pop Records.
"Kingdom of the Animals" by Iron & Wine
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