Iron and Wine’s new album Kiss Each Other Clean may be their best yet. While older albums are near masterpieces, Kiss Each Other Clean is revolutionary for Iron and Wine.
Listening to the album is like digging through an aged oak cabinet filled with Jameson; anything you take away from it will go down warm and smooth, leaving you intoxicated and wanting more.
Past albums were ambient to the point of inducing sleep. They were gentle and delicate; one big lullaby disguised as vinyl. While this timid sound was well deserving of a golf-clap, many of their tracks were unvaried, sliding into one big blur.
Kiss Each Other Clean masters the difficult task of creating a diversified album while staying true to a particular mood. While sound and style may vary drastically from track to track, each implements a specific atmosphere.
Singer Samuel Beam has strapped soul and funk to his arms and leapt from the nest.
He takes the tribal sounds of the Paul Simon ere, combines them with harmonies worthy of the Bee Gees and makes it soar. The mid-70s vibe is apparent is songs like “Glad Man Singing,” where Beam creates something similar to Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.”
However, the band hasn’t lost the charm that fans originally fell in love with. Like true virtuosos, they have expanded themselves while remaining true to the prophetic sound that plagues your brain long after a listening.
There is still the same somber, lonely guitar, Beam’s rasping voice and lyrics that sound like they were lifted from a Robert Frost poem. In “Half Moon,” he sighs, “Low night noise in the wintertime / I wake besides you on the floor / counting your breathing. / I can’t see nothing in this half moon, / Lay be down if I should lose you.”
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