Archive: Clumsy and Free: Iron & Wine's "Light Verse"

Interview with Sam Beam: "If you're telling the truth, you don't have to have your guard up"

WORDS BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK
ILLUSTRATION BY SAM BEAM

A heavy hand and a light touch is a combination that’s always worked for Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, and on Light Verse the weight of this lightness is felt with an unprecedented fullness. Beam declares in the presser for his seventh studio album that, “it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album,” — a declaration he qualifies with a “Just kidding!” ─ but it really is the loosest, freest, most unclasped album he’s recorded. There’s perhaps always been an element of humour in the Iron & Wine canon: from the sly smile lurking in the way his lofty lyrics hover above even the gloomiest depths of his rainy voice, to the etymology of the “Iron & Wine” moniker—borrowed from the brand name of a tonic used to treat anaemia. That sly smirk has broadened into a wide grin on Light Verse, with songs that reach earnestly for the simple joy of making music with friends in a sunbathed city that only responds to a light touch (Los Angeles).

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