How do you keep being consistent in creating high-quality music while at the same time sticking to your guns and bringing (more or less) new elements into your music all the time? You can try and coax an answer out of Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, as he seems to have been able to keep up that tricky balance from his 2002 debut The Creek Drank The Cradle right up to his latest, Hen’s Teeth.
One of Beam’s traits seems to be to think out the complete concept of an album from its title and cover to every minute detail of both music and the lyrics. Than has not made him one of the most prolific artist around (10 albums in 24 years), but what that has guaranteed his listeners so far is consistency in what can be dubbed quality control.
Yes, Beam’s music falls within that – for some, dreaded – sub-genre inadequately called ‘singer-songwriter’. His first album was hailed by many critics as the revival of the prime singer-songwriter style of the early to mid-70s, but from there on, Beam has kept on introducing new musical elements, whether it is from other genres or sub-genres, or just in the reshuffling of the arrangements that give the songs another, often fresh sound. He keeps up that concept here, too, with, songs like “Defiance, Ohio” taking on a jazzed-up bossa nova motif coupled with subtle strings.
At the same time, Beam sticks to his concept of using literary or word-play references in his album titles. While his previous 2024 effort bore the title of Light Verse (poetry on trivial or playful themes that is written primarily to amuse and entertain and that often involved the use of nonsense and wordplay), Hen’s Teeth refers to anything that doesn’t occur in a natural manner.
No coincidence there either – the songs for both albums were conceived in the same time frame. And, while the former had something that Beam considered as lighter lyrical tones, the themes on the new album definitely have darker overtones: “Run into the one you love forever / Laugh into each other’s empty mouth / We all fall through the window / Babies having babies / Everything crying out loud”, he sings on “Roses”. Yet, these and other words here are all set in that languorous, often melancholic musical background Beam is so good at without sounding sticky or kitschy at any point.
With Hen’s Teeth, again, Sam Beam brings us more well-aged Iron & Wine.
