SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: IRON & WINE – HEN’S TEETH

IRON & WINE
HEN’S TEETH
SUB POP

There are few characteristics you can attribute to Iron & Wine, aka Sam Beam, through his artistic career for this quarter of a century or so that he has been on the music scene. First of all, he surely isn’t the most prolific singer-songwriter around, with 10 albums under his moniker, including Hen’s Teeth, this fresh new one.

This could mean one of two things—to put it mildly, he is not too prolific, or he takes his sweet time to come up with new music. Either could be good or bad, but luckily for Beam and for his ever-growing number of listeners, he puts some serious thought into what he is coming up with, both musically and lyrically.

At the same time, Beam has shown us so far that he isn’t standing still, just churning out acoustic ditties and first words about why that morning’s breakfast upset his stomach. This comes from the fact that when he first appeared, Beam was hailed as revivalist of prime-time singer-songwriter genres from the 70s, with every and each of his albums that followed him showing that his music is ever-growing and complex, and that his lyrical content is neither losing its substance, nor quality.

That brings us to Hen’s Teeth, an album that in a way seems to be a continuation of his previous album Light Verse (2024), not only with the fact that the songs they include were conceived in the same time frame, nor by the word play of their titles, but in the fact that this new album plays the darker (lyrical) side of the previous lighter one, without sacrificing any high-standard musical or lyrical content. Hen’s teeth might mean anything that is not naturally occurring, but every sound and word here sound quite natural and in their right place.

Artist Links