4AD/Warner Bros.; 2011
Our take - 6.8
Kiss Each Other Clean is Sam Beam and Iron & Wine's major label debut, a fact that is easily discernible on first listen. The days of whispered, intimate, I-am-singing-directly-to-you style vocals are long gone, as are the hushed sounds of his fingers on the guitar and the lo-fi, crackly recordings that inhabited his early work.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, 2007's The Shepard's Dog was a complete expansion of the Iron & Wine palette-- increased percussion, a full backing band, fatter bass, and higher degrees of song complexity all signaled a shift away from their lo-fi, bedroom roots.
What remained in The Shepard's Dog was Beam's constantly involving voice and lyrics, his guitar-work, and solid song writing chops. Kiss Each Other Clean is the next step in Iron &Wine's evolution-- what remains with this album is Beams' ability to paint vivid pictures with his lyrics and his ability to write great songs. Same Beam is talented, and with his first record on a major label, he does exactly what one would expect someone in that position to do... experiment with the studio and a bigger budget, add new sounds, increase the amount and variety of instruments, and create something entirely new.
Without question, for Sam Beam, this was an album of experimentation and great risk. He uses buzzing synths, saxophones and other horns (they're back everyone, i.e. Girls and Destroyer), pan flutes, in-and-out percussion, tribal echoes, some funk, whistles I can't place, and much much more. To add to that, for the first time Beam is projecting his voice, and he does so with confidence. All of these sounds are JAMMED into an album that is only 10 songs long, an impressive feat.
The risks Beam and the rest of the Iron &Wine crew take with this album are great, some pay off-- some don't. "Rabbit Will Run" is a track that is unlike any Iron & Wine song to this point, it's complex and rewarding, "Tree By The River" is the most reflective of his old sound and a personal favorite for that matter and "Monkeys Uptown" has an interesting bass line, some sort of chimey-percussion and nice hooky guitar to keep interest with a little bit of synthy-background-buzz to fills in the details. "Big Burned Hand" is an example of a miss-- the funk seems out of place and a giant honking sax and overlong runtime carry the song over the top.
While I "like" the album, I don't "love" it as I have some of their previous records. While this is entirely a vague and subjective description of what the album sounds like, it raises a good point-- the album feels a little off. There is so much going on in Kiss Each Other Clean in terms of instrumentation, melody and direction but it seems strangely, well, empty. The rich imagery he evokes with his lyrics seem like they are inhabiting an alien world of buzzing synths and blaring horns and it isn't necessarily believable.
Kiss Each Other Clean is ambitious and a well put together album, but it is also hit and miss. It will be a divisive record for die-hard Iron & Wine fans, the ones who want Sam Beam to forever sing them to sleep, but credit is well deserved for a new direction and a pretty successful experiment.
Iron and Wine | Tree by the river | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
This is certainly an interesting album. It is not only different from most of Iron and Wine's typical style, but it's also internally diverse.
ReplyDeleteI think you've done a great job sorting out many of the sounds in this album and what they contribute/take away.
I'm no diehard Iron and Wine fan, so I am intrigued by some of the new sounds. On the other hand, I wonder if a bit of it is forced (the "synthy-background-buzz" in Monkeys Uptown was a downside for me in an otherwise fun song).
His vocal range is definitely changing. Me and Lazarus was catchy and somehow reminded me of Freddie Mercury and Queen's sound.
All of that said and with general compliments, Tree By the River might be my favorite song and I wouldn't mind if he just kept cranking out albums with that old-fashioned Iron and Wine style.
And while I think I understand what you mean about the lyrics not always fitting in, I think the lyrics are still a huge strong point for the album. I think that the simple, one-acoustic-guitar + folk-beautiful-voice has worked for so long and can continue to work because of the poetry that weaves the melodies together.
Then again, I agree that Big Burned Hand is too....bulky. Too much.
Keep up the good work brother.
P.S. "bobbin' in the ebb and flow" (Me and Lazarus)...shout out to you? Probably.
I think you hit the nail on the head on a couple of points and I definitely enjoyed the Sam Beam "shout-out" on "Me and Lazarus".
ReplyDeleteI agree the lyrics are strong, and I tried to emphasize how he still paints such good pictures with his words. I just felt that they were a little misplaced.
He is very poetic, but not of the type, I'm-a-poet-first-musician-second as we can see in someone like Conor O'berst.
I really think this experimentation on the album came from the sheer excitement of having a full budget and resources of a major label. Sounds that he previously wouldn't have considered toying with were readily available, and for a musician, it of course is hard not to experiment.
At the end of the day, I say well done. I can't wait to hear what type of a direction we'll see from Beam and crew in the future.