Album Review: Iron and Wine – Archive Series No. 5: Tallahassee Recordings (Sub Pop)

In the nineteen years since the release of his first album The Creek That Drank The Cradle, Sam Beam, better known as Iron and Wine, has moved from his neo folk beginnings to incorporate elements of R&B, Jazz and Electronica. He has also released collaborations with Jessica Hoop, Calexico and Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses).

In parallel with the new works there has been a programme of releasing earlier recordings. There was the 2009 double album Around the Well and since 2015 there has been The Archive Series which mimics one of Beam’s key influences Neil Young in bringing out material long sort after by fans.

Archive Series No.5 Tallahassee Recordings dates from 1989, some three years before the Sub Pop recordings that were released as The Creek That Drank The Cradle and Archive Series No.1. In contrast to those albums this has the hiss of a home recording which adds to their intimacy. You feel you are listening in on this talented artist honing his musical and lyrical skills prior to releasing them to the world.

Beam plays his guitar with a distinctive percussive strumming and occasional single string picking. Where needed he adds drums to give the songs greater momentum and the occasional harmonica to emphasise a theme. Bass is played by his room-mate EJ Holowicki, who also acted as engineer and archival producer.  At this time Bream was a professor in film studies and the songs have a quality of visual story telling through their use of detail and images. The singing is hushed, world weary and occasionally double tracked. Though less clear than on his subsequent releases you can still hear every word.

The lyrical themes of his later work are here. There are descriptive and contemplative stories about fragile marriages, broken relationships, god and death, with a range of characters such as Lucy, Martha and Tommy, and animals, such as dogs, leopards and cicadas.  Many of the songs are in the first person increasing their poetic emotional directness.

Seasonally, this is a cold album, for example, in the opening song Why Hate Winter the scene is described in rich detail of a night where the “floorboards are quiet and cold to the feet”, “the radio man says it is a negative two” and “it’s much too cold to run like a dog alone.” This six minute song provides a vivid description of a couple at home together doing normal everyday things, like having a bath and watching TV, whilst the singer contemplates his worthiness in the relationship.

There are three more winter themed songs, Cold Town, describes a domestic setting on a wet day when “spring feels so far away,” in Elizabeth “The woman goes on and on frozen ground” and in the final song on the album Valentine the “house can get cold.”  Throughout coldness is a motif for the relationships that have ended and used to emphasise the emptiness that is felt.

On This Solemn Day there has been a death. The lyrics captures memories and feelings for the loved one who has died and also the fragility of the relationship with a loved one still alive, “and hold you close as you’ll allow.”

However it’s not all death and end of relationships, Calm On the Valley uses great visual imagery  of an evening being massaged by the woman he got a tattoo of, and wed, as the “setting sun … goes down” and the moon moves “high above.” This song about soul mates has its gentle thoughts emphasised by the slowly picked guitar over the bass and snare, the extended syllables of the final words of each line of the verses and the lengthy “da da da” refrain at it’s mid point and end.

John’s Glass Eye is the first of two short vignettes that seem to be about the same Lucy, in this one in just eight lines and less than two minutes we learn how John got hit by buckshot and lost his sight. The second vignette, Ex Lover Lucy Jones, is about how Lucy has gone overseas and won’t be coming back to her former lover who clearly still has feelings for her.

Loaning Me Secrets opens with dark, ominous sounding drums and this is lightened by a Spanish style picked guitar line that comes and goes. Again about the end of a relationship, it gives advice to the ex lover of things to not do whilst also reassuring them he will save “Everything you gave to me” and will “watch your back.”

Show Him The Ground and Straight and Tall have more robust lyrics about fighting “the knock on your chin,” boasting “you ain’t done half of what your confess” and feeling “big and strong”. Both are sung over lightly finger picked guitar strings and Straight and Tall has a near sing along chorus refrain of “That ain’t you” over louder more dynamic bass and drums.

This collection of songs showcase Iron and Wine’s early ability to write vivid, believable tales of life, love, infidelity and death, it has the strip downed sound that his hard core fans have missed and is a great place to start, or continue, enjoying this talented singer songwriter. I am already looking forward to where he goes next and future releases in this series.

John Bradbury