Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

Listening to the last Samuel Beam's effort - after enjoying so much the now three years old (fantastic) "The Shepherd's Dog", I'm hopelessly lost in his music and vision, again...

My vinyl copy arrived at Ivan's yesterday and after half-an-hour it was spinning on my turntable... must say I wasn't prepared to SUCH a nice music... IMHO, most difficult for a musician is keeping the pace in composing AND don't loosing a one-of-a-kind identity... in this very case, a truly successful task, indeed.

Samuel IS Iron & Wine... you can recognize this countrified, laid back, SO uniquely and supremely Americana music and you can't be wrong... it's a tad Van Morrison, some Matt Valentine, 120 percent Sam Beam's: Me and Lazarus, Godless Brother in Love, Glad Man Singing, Tree by the River... this highlight-tracks from an extremely high standard whole are nicely engineered, played and mastered (by Greg Calbi) and the deep, modulating bass is, sort-of, giving the mood to the music, grooving and growling, cool, inspired, reminding Jack Casady's superb work with Jefferson Airplane or Phil Lesh's with Grateful Dead... a musical back-bone.

Music flows slow, pulsating like the heartbeat of truest America - the small towns, the cornfields, tobacco chewing people and w-i-d-e skyes... quiet, peaceful people unaware of lobbies and wars, yet conscious about world troubles, keeping their optimism...

Really, after listening to the two sides, I wished to have "more", so re-listened to "Me and Lazarus", just to say hello & goodbye to this beautiful disc, so... so... analog.

... and felt better - content, I'd say - after turning OFF gears and closing my studietto, heading to my wife and home, in the chilly evening air... isn't music made for this, pals?!?

A superb disc: great music and... a recording 2die4!!!