Iron & Wine’s latest is a warm collection of rootsy songs anchored by simple ingredients: vocals that sound like a hometown friend telling his life story, and fingerpicked guitar weaving branches to hold the treehouse together.
Where supporting instrumentation fleshes out the sound, it’s done in an appealingly organic way – you could almost see the band crowding around the same microphone, if the production wasn’t so clear and spacious.
‘Bitter Truth’ is a standout, its country lilt recalling East Kentucky maverick Jim Ford at his most delicate and beautiful. Beam’s instincts seem to run towards a gentle warmth, fundamentally at odds with the doomed romanticism of, say, Townes Van Zandt.
That’s no bad thing, however – that kind of wise positivity is a rarely-explored part of singer-songwriter territory, with parts of Springsteen’s work and the kindly yarns of John Prine conspicuous for having few cousins.
It’s in this vein that Iron & Wine’s sixth solo album succeeds. If you’re looking for a record to treat you with kindness, to wrap you in warmth and to share some of its homespun wisdom with you, look no further than Beast Epic.