In some ways, listening to Iron and Wine’s Light Verse feels more like reading a novel. You get caught up in the details of Sam Beam’s characters. New lessons turn up, and along the way, you find yourself wrapped up in places you never thought you’d be. All of which is interesting since there was a point where Beam wasn’t sure this album would ever come to pass. During the pandemic, domesticity replaced songwriting and recapturing the musical mode took a while. After tentative steps recording LORI, an EP of Lori McKenna covers, he found himself getting back on track.
Recorded in Laurel Canyon largely because all the people he wanted to use lived out there, Beam’s seventh album is a most surprising concoction. Light Verse traverses times and tides, crafting something with musical and lyrical ideas that sound like they should be in a constant state of chaos. Banjo and guitar play against stereotype combining with strings to create a most beguiling sound as “You Never Know” offers a lesson in living in the joy and surprise of life, “You could make gray and call it gold/ Let it fool your eyes/ You could make rain and let it have your life.” Because the answers play out in real time, you must stay for the entire show and see exactly where things go.
Finding a wealth of odd angles, the guitars of “Anyone’s Game,” both equally rhythmic and off-kilter, establish an offbeat attitude that finds the inner truth of trying to ascertain the inexplicability of life. Equating it to a game of hide and seek, Beam exposes how little we really understand life, “If they crawl into another’s heart/ While someone counts to 10/ Let’s just say that’s the hardest place to hide.” To hide is impossible; the answer seems to be getting on with it, living each minute as if it could be the last.
Combining rustic slide guitar with loving, sympathetic strings, “All in Good Time” brings to life a couple who no longer fit. Trading verses and lines, Beam and Fiona Apple bring the romance and rumble of a relationship to life: “All in good time and that’s what it was/ Mistook the cash in the mattress for love/ Dropped all our weapons and shrank from the blood/ All in good time.” Somehow, the end seemed to almost be preordained.
The relationships Beam sings about seem to end badly. The violins play out a kind of agony that goes with “Taken by Surprise.” The opening chord is intentionally off, much like the liaison, promising at first, but in the end, it’s the kind of disappointment that never ends. “If she ever comes back around/ Just to slam an open door/ Or to lay her hand in mine/ I don’t get taken by surprise anymore.” Despite that claim, it seems that being taken by surprise would be exactly what had happened.
Iron and Wine’s Light Verse ensnares the listener by spinning a web that irresistibly draws you in. Rather than struggling to get out, the music and lyrics hold you, leaving you wondering how Sam Beam can make such a complex record sound so easy.
“Light Verse” is out 26th April via Sub Pop.