The Last Time This Happened To Me Was In 2002 (Mini Album Review)

Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean (2011)

I get around to things (more than) a little late. Usually by about a few decades or so.

So the fact that I got my hands on this album as early as 2012 (it came out in ’11) wasn’t too bad.

What I didn’t expect, though, was that it would become my own personal favorite album of that year (and has never been far from the main rotation since).

The last time a contemporary album inhabited that heavy of a spot in my listening practice was about a decade earlier. (That one’s on this list.)

Plus, like most of the greatest art discovery experiences, it took me completely by surprise.

Purchased on a whim, knowing how much I loved Sam Beam’s music but having no idea what was in store, I couldn’t have been more shocked and delighted on first listen.

Iron & Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean

Shades of Rumours era Fleetwood Mac, CSNY, Beck’s Mutations album, and a bunch of others (mostly 70’s stuff) are all there in what is a significantly more produced album than what I’d known from his earlier albums.

Synths, horns, electric instruments, drums, percussion, stacks of harmonies, and effects are arranged in with Beam’s singular voice and pristine acoustic guitar, no doubt in large part due to producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Gomez, Califone).

If you’re at all familiar with I&W’s earlier, largely solo acoustic songs (his moody-as-hell cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” might come to mind), then this record might thrill you, or you might hate it.

But purists can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.

It’s the job of an artist to grow, to experiment, and to do new things for him or herself (even if those new things recall other, older things).

Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) has accomplished it brilliantly on this one.

The Recommended Track is “Glad Man Singing”