Sam Beam delivers a companion album to 2024’s Light Verse
Punted in the publicity handout as a “sibling” album to 2024’s Light Verse, primarily as many of the songs contained here originated at the same sessions, Iron And Wine’s Sam Beam keeps pretty much to his trodden path on his eighth album. It’s a simpler production than that of its sibling, several of the songs do feature strings and things but there’s a more grounded feel overall. While the album title refers to items of scarcity (as rare as…) with Beam explaining that “To me it suggests the impossible. Hen’s teeth do not exist. And that’s what this record felt like: a gift that shouldn’t be there but it is. An impossible thing but it’s real,” it’s not that rare, in fact, it simply is another rather fine Iron And Wine album.
Beam wanders through various styles over the 10 tracks here. The simple folk tones which open Roses, the album’s first track, are soon overtaken by a string arrangement giving the song a fine folk baroque feel, an element revisited on the closing song No Easy Way Down. In between there is the stripped back Paper And Stone, a delightful little melody which uses the popular kids’ game as a metaphor for relationships while Singing Saw (featuring Beam’s daughter Arden on backing vocals) tiptoes quite wonderfully throughout its shift shaping arrangement.
The slight hint of tropicalia on the breezy Defiance, Ohio steers the song a mite too close to yacht rock but that is more than redeemed on the ethereal Dates And Dead People, a song which has a slight hint of the late David Crosby to it. On two of the songs (Robin’s Egg and Wait Up) Beam is joined by the trio of I’m With Her (Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins) with the former quite reminiscent of sunshine folk rock from the 60s’ while the latter employs the trio’s vocals to great effect on a song which is simply gorgeous, its pulsating beat and warm sound lifting it head and shoulders above the other songs here.
