Iron and Wine / Around the Well - SP808

Collecting songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released, Around the Well spans Iron and Wine’s earliest sessions which yielded the band’s debut (2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle) through material recorded for 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog. The double-disc Around the Well collection is broken up into two sections. The first half is an assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and the second highlights moments captured in the confines of proper studios with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers. The album’s title comes from a line in the song “The Trapeze Swinger,” a fan favorite which was written for and included in the movie In Good Company. Three more songs written and recorded for the film finally make their appearance here as well: “Belated Promise Ring,” “God Made the Automobile” and “Homeward, These Shoes.” Around the Well also brings together hard-to-find covers such as The Flaming Lips’ “Waitin’ for a Superman” and New Order’s “Love Vigilantes,” along with one of Iron and Wine’s earliest originals, “Sacred Vision.” In support of Around the Well, this May Iron and Wine will perform ten intimate shows in five cities. In addition, Iron and Wine have begun work on the follow-up to The Shepherd’s Dog and plan to release a new album in spring, 2010.

Released: May 19, 2009

Iron and Wine / The Shepherd's Dog - SP710

Iron and Wine’s last release (not including the collaborative In the Reins EP which featured songs by Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam and performances by both Iron and Wine and Calexico together) was 2005’s Woman King, a 6-song EP which distinguished itself from its predecessors with a deepening integration of spiraling, dense opuses with intimate confessionals. On The Shepherd’s Dog this integration is complete. Sam Beam has confessed to finding spiritual inspiration in Tom Waits’ pièce de résistance, Swordfishtrombones, an album with which Waits upended his previous strategies and forged a new musical language for himself. Recorded by Sam with the assistance of longtime producer Brian Deck and engineer Colin Studebaker, The Shepherd’s Dog succeeds in accomplishing a similar cathartic recasting of the artist’s intentions. The arrangements here are kaleidoscopic and rich. “White Tooth Man” rocks with a desperate, menacing intensity while "Boy with a Coin,” the album’s first single, is darkly playful with a handclap hook tumbling under its cascading melody. The whole album breathes. Its seductive rhythms percolate and undulate, from the Psych-Bhangra-redux of “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” to the album’s last dance—a waltz—"Flightless Bird, American Mouth.” Compositionally, it is Iron and Wine’s most ambitious and accomplished recording to date. It’s also the most satisfying.

The LP version of this album comes with a download code for the mp3s of these songs. Yay!

SP710

Release date: September 25, 2007

Pitchfork review of The Shepherd’s Dog

Allmusic review of The Shepherd’s Dog

New York Times review of The Shepherd’s Dog

Dusted review of The Shepherd’s Dog

Billboard review of The Shepherd’s Dog

The Shepherd’s Dog on Metacritic

Released: September 25, 2007

Iron and Wine / Our Endless Numbered Days - SP630

Miami’s Sam Beam makes music under the name Iron and Wine and September, 2002 saw the release of his debut album, The Creek Drank the Cradle. That record was/is hushed, literate, intimate, melodic: a quiet treasure which, with its unaffected candor and depth, found fans all over. (Entertainment Weekly: “Based in Miami, of all places, [Beam] invests these songs with hypnotic beauty and sparkling melody, making them as accessible as they are affecting.”) Our Endless Numbered Days is the second full-length album from Iron and Wine and it was recorded both at Sam’s Miami home and in Chicago’s Engine Studios with Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, etc.) On it, Sam is aided and abetted by regular touring and recording conspirators: his sister Sarah Beam, Patrick McKinney, Jeff McGriff, EJ Holowicki, and Jonathon Bradley. Listening to Our Endless Numbered Days makes plain Sam’s deft touch with words and melody; one that allows him to turn out stories about love, loss, faith, or the lack of it that are at once personal and universal, set to music that is sweetly haunting and timeless.

SP630
p>. release date: March 23, 2004

The original pressing, which is out of print and unavailable, of this CD came with a bonus disc, which included the following tracks:
1. Cinder and Smoke (demo)
2. Swans and the Swimming
3. Free Until They Cut Me Down (demo)
4. Hickory

Released: March 23, 2004

Iron and Wine / The Creek Drank the Cradle - SP600

Iron and Wine, the recorded Word of one Samuel Beam, Miami, Florida; is one of those one-guy-and-his -tapedeck affairs. The Creek Drank the Cradle is filled with hushed, restrained vocals, affecting lyrics from a naturalist’s perspective, exploring relationships and the hope born from them, all of which come across as though whispered to you personally, accompanied by guitar, banjo, slide guitar… Taken as a whole, The Creek Drank the Cradle_, Iron and Wine’swine debut CD, is an ode to an older South; a part of America that is defined by “traditional values,” pastoral imagery and arcane manners. Or maybe that’s just what we want to hear.

Released: 2002-09-24 (CD), 2003-05-20 (LP), 2002-09-24 (MP3s)

Iron and Wine / Iron and Wine/Calexico - In The Reins - OC28

This is Sam Beam (Iron and Wine as you know him) playing many a sweet lick with his buddies in Calexico. Do you want to know how this record came about? Well I will tell you…

Three years ago, Iron And Wine’s Sam Beam entertained the idea of recording with Calexico founding members Joey Burns and John Convertino as the backing band for what would have become his debut record. Due to unavoidable situations, that recording didn’t happen. Finally, after much acclaim for both bands, recording for “In The Reins” took place in December of 2004. It’s a collaborative affair that features seven Sam originals with the backing of the full Calexico band and vocals by Joey Burns. A truly harmonious affair with equal parts Iron and Wine and Calexico to satisfy fans of either or both. These tracks offer something new and exciting beyond what the listener has come to expect from either act.

Track Listing:

1. He Lays in The Reins
2. Prison on Route 41
3. A History of Lovers
4. Red Dust
5. Sixteen, Maybe Less
6. Burn That Broken Bed
7. Dead Man’s Will

Released: September 27, 2005