Album Review: Iron and Wine Kiss Each Other Clean

Album cover by Iron and Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean. Photo / Supplied

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Folk fellow finds the funk on his fifth.

What with the rustic name he operates under and the very big beard he hides behind, American troubadour Sam Beam has been pegged as a bit of a nu-folkie on his past efforts. But there's always been something strangely rhythmic going on beneath his guitar and voice, especially when he hooked up with Calexico on 2005's mini-album In The Reins, a collaboration they revived on some parts of Beam's previous, third long-player The Shepherd's Dog. That one had him parting company with his backwoods beginnings.

This one moves even further from guitar-framed Americana into territory that reminds variously of Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and Paul Simon (both with and without his mate Art) on an album that just might make an alterna-star of Beam.

Well, the opening track Walking from Home, with its long and oddly lovely litany of near-apocalyptic imagery sounds like the best song The National never wrote. And there's lush pop, too, in the likes of Tree By The River, as well as the sad-eyed balladry of Godless Brother in Love, and the Wonder reference comes in on the squelchy synthesizer-squealing soul-funk of Big Burned Hand.

But the album's deeper thrills come when Beam breaks out a Womad's worth of exotic percussion and gets busy on the likes of the finale Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me which swings from its wiry African-funk beginnings to a Neil Young-esque grand guitar surge of an ending over its seven mesmerising minutes. Recommended.

- TimeOut