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If 2007’s ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’- the point where Iron & Wine grew into a full band – relocated the operation to the dusty outskirts of town from the remote wooden shack where songwriter Sam Beam’s largely solo and acoustic early works resided, this follow-up continues the journey by pushing into the bustling heart of the city.
Initially, it’s hard to recognise this as the work of the musician first encountered on 2003’s intimate ‘The Creek Drank the Cradle’. Listen closer, though, and the warmth and melodic prowess that’s distinguished Beam from countless folkie-minded song-spinners remain as alluring as ever, only this time around they’re joined by richly detailed textures that reveal their hooks gradually. Occasionally – the plastic funk of ‘Big Hand Burning’s doomed to divide opinion - the adventurous arrangements threaten to overwhelm Beam’s sweet yet bristly visions of mythical America, full of hopeless dreams of escape, forlorn romance and stark reminders of mortality. But for the most part, ‘Kiss Each Other Clean’s mixture of American folk, rock and country traditions, Jamaican and African musical templates and subtle electronic touches adds extra enchantment to the tunes, the timeless quality of which fully merit the album’s lengthy gestation period.
In what could be an update of ‘A-Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, opener ‘Walking Far From Home’ embarks on a vision-fuelled journey across a steadily debilitating land, replacing Dylan’s stark apocalyptic dread with a sense of bittersweet wonder riding atop a complex web of vocal harmonies that culminates in a heavenly mournful angel choir. The 70’s soft rock indebted harmonies are the defining feature of the album, providing endlessly enticing layers of notes that add captivating depth to the deceptively simple likes of ‘Godless Brother In Love’ (a hymn-like gem gifted with Beam’s most graceful melody to date) and ‘Glad Man Singing’, which builds into a gently rollicking groove from sparsely strummed foundations.
Elsewhere, the dense, woodwind-enriched clatter of the brooding ‘Rabbit Will Run’ could be drawn from a less deliberately discordant cousin of Tom Waits’ mid-80’s albums, whilst the gentle back porch sway of ‘Half Moon’ tips its hat to the unadorned delights of the ‘Woman King’ EP (2004). The undisputed highpoint, however, is the epic closer ‘Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me’, which adds aggression and distortion to Beam’s palette with arresting results, evolving from an adrenalized litany bruised by boozed-up horns into a wounded, ramshackle guitar bust-up.
