Iron and Wine, Boy With A Coin

One of Iron and Wine’s strengths is the band’s ability to grab hold of a humble, deceptively simple motif, idea, or sound and just repeat it ’til it’s driven like a railroad spike through your skull. That’s not as bad as it sounds, honest; on past Iron and Wine albums, songwriter/guitarist/etc. guy Sam Beam has been able to take a riff or a rhythm or a couple of lines and use them as a gorgeous, wonderful mantra of sorts. (See “Free Until They Cut Me Down,” “Radio War,” or “Promising Light” for good examples.)

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes repetition becomes less meditative and more like running in place, fruitlessly going nowhere fast. That’s the snag with the lead track of this three-track teaser for Iron and Wine’s upcoming full-length (due out this fall), “Carried Home,” which is decently lush, melancholy, and backwoodsy, all at the same time, but which gets really repetitive as it goes on (and on, for six-and-a-half minutes), almost to the point of, well, dullness. Things turn around a bit at the end, admittedly, where all kinds of organic keys and string-type things come in and start layering on top of another, like Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden doing some kind of an Iron and Wine remix. It’s interesting, yes, but also a little bit off-putting to fans of Iron and Wine’s earlier stuff.

Luckily, things pick up considerably afterwards with the title track — there’s still a more layered sound than Beam’s listeners might be used to, with nimble, finger-picked guitars very nearly dancing over clapping hands and a wistful bit of slide guitar, but the tempo’s quick and lively enough that it draws the attention along. The track’s reminiscent of one of the late Jeff Buckley’s less-pretentious moments, and that’s never bad (okay, almost never, anyway). Not bad, especially considering that it’s the one song of the three that’s actually on the new album.

The capper, though, is “Kingdom of the Animals,” a down-home, Appalachian-sounding hymn complete with friendly, welcoming piano, bluesy guitar, a sad-but-warm tale of childhood love, and a full-on gospel choir of backup singers (whom I keep expecting to break into “Goin’ to the chapel / and we’re gonna get ma-a-a-ried…”). The song rambles and rolls like it’s actually going somewhere, finally, straggling off down some country road known only to the narrator and his girl.

Strangely, near the end it hits me: it sounds like Sam Beam’s actually happy. Not just smiling fondly at reminiscences of friends long gone or lazing about on a sunny Southern afternoon, but honest-to-God cheerful. And stranger still, the feel really seems to fit him. If the upcoming The Shepherd’s Dog is anything like “Kingdom of the Animals,” it’s definitely going to be something worth hearing.