Iron & Wine
Hen's Teeth
50--100点相当
Spill Magazine が満点
内容は充実しているし、
いつの間にか目立って選出されなくなっていた
メディアの年間ベストに
複数から選ばれてくるのでは？
フロリダ生まれのSSW
Sam Beam によるソロ・プロジェクト
芸術学の修士号を所持
David Garza、Sebastian Steinberg、Tyler Chester、
Griffin Goldsmith、Beth Goodfellow、Kyle Crane、
Paul Cartwright、I’m With Her
らが参加
8th
Given that Iron and Wine – the stage name of Carolina songwriter Sam Beam – was there at the beginning of the freak folk boom of the early noughties, it might come as a surprise to learn that he is only on his eighth studio album. The almost unanimous critical acclaim that has met the previous seven makes you think he’s not the sort of musician who benefits from rushing into things. Those earlier albums have a remarkable consistency of tone. There have been curveballs – 2011’s Kiss Each Other Clean saw a lurch towards electronic pop music that was only a surprise if you hadn’t heard the covers of Stereolab and the Postal Service that Beam released a couple of years previously – but by and large he has maintained a hushed, literate country-folk persona, albeit one that has moved slowly away from the weirder, more lo-fi elements of his first two Sub Pop albums, The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and Our Endless Numbered Days (2004).
Beam’s work is rooted in the American South, more so than many of his freak folk peers, and Hen’s Teeth sees him leaning ever further into the South’s musical traditions. To this end, he is aided on a couple of songs by folk/roots/bluegrass trio I’m With Her (whom we interviewed way back in 2018), who add an array of violins, banjos and guitars to Beam’s own acoustic guitar. If this seems like a natural progression from his previous album, 2024’s Light Verse, it’s actually more than that. Songs for both albums were recorded at the same time and with the same band. But Hen’s Teeth is no offcuts album, no forgotten sibling. The two act as different sides of the same coin: Light Verse, as its name suggests, was full of space and playfulness. Hen’s Teeth is decidedly darker, with a more prominent seam of melancholy. The most notable exception is Robin’s Egg, one of the I’m With Her collaborations, which feels like it could have been written for (or by) the Roches. It’s a bounding, bright slice of 1970s-inspired Laurel Canyon prog-country, bursting with the lushest of vocal harmonies.
That 70s vibe remains, but in a toned-down, after-the-party kind of way. It’s not a maudlin one, but it does admit emotional ambiguity. In Your Ocean is a blustery strum with an undertone of stark loneliness. Roses, which opens the album, is elegiac from its outset, but builds into a purposefully confusing crescendo. There are Stephen Stills-like flourishes of guitar (which go well with the Graham Nash-esque bits sprinkled through the album) and disconcerting crashes of piano. It’s as if Beam wants to make us aware early on that Hen’s Teeth is Light Verse’s chaotic twin.
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