Iron & Wine, the pseudonym of lyrical genius Sam Beam, has already had a tumultuous year, coasting on the critical acclaim of 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days and the Woman King EP released earlier this year. Beam has mastered the singer-songwriter craft, not to mention the fine art of maintaining a four-inch beard. His mix of earnest message, hushed voice and steady guitar is one of the most easily recognizable styles of production in the trade. What Iron & Wine notably lacks is complex instrumentation. Fortunately, the ambitious new In the Reins, a seven-track collaboration with Tucson, Ariz. band Calexico, tackles Beam’s “just a man and a guitar” formula with great results.
Beam couples his superb song-writing skills with Calexico’s instrumental expertise in the form of horn, blues harp, accordion and even Wurlitzer organ accompaniment. The plucky, spaghetti Western-inspired boys of Calexico, John Convertino and Joey Burns, haven’t graced the music world with their melancholy renditions of old ghost town tunes since 2003’s Feast of Wire.
The opening track “He Lays in the Reins” launches the album with surprising energy and a startling operatic vocal by mariachi-cum-Pavarotti Salvador Duran. “Prison on Route 41,” a twangy ode to the woman whose love saved the crooner from a criminal fate, is perhaps the most poignant track here. The universally appealing “History of Lovers” presents Beam as animated as you’ll ever find him, propelled by Calexico’s punchy trumpeting. Both “16, Maybe Less” and “Burn That Broken Bed” are lilting, quiet retrospectives characteristic of Iron & Wine’s work to date, conjuring thoughts of being lost in the desert and chasing the wind whistling through Sam Beam’s coarse whiskers. In the Reins is a near-perfect combination of wistful Southern gentility and sheer Western bravado.
