ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 24TH 2011
1YRON’S TOP 52 RECORDS OF 2011 RANKING: #44


A year since it’s release, the idea of listening to Kiss Each Other Clean from start to finish doesn’t seem so scary after all. Iron & Wine’s fourth studio album and first for a major label, critics and fans alike were divided by Sam Beam’s increasingly fuller and layered sound. Still, it makes sense. In an interview with Spin magazine back in November 2010, Beam was eager to reinforce the domestic, stately side of the record, that “early to mid-70’s FM, radio-friendly music.” Indeed, Kiss Each Other Clean is a brilliant exercise in a developing aesthetic which feels incredibly intimate, specific to a certain time and place. The one record for me which recalls that so-called early to mid-70’s FM, radio-friendly music would be Joni Mitchell’s 1974 classic Court And Spark. For all it’s lyrical introspection and personal soul-searching, Court And Spark is a record with one eye squarely fixed on the burgeoning California landscape and the unique attitudes of its inhabitants. Mitchell continually looked outward, analysing and assessing the way people act, why they do what they do, with all their beauties and their imperfections condensed in songs such as the self-critical Same Situation and its immediate predecessor People’s Parties, proving that pop music could be both popular and personal; Court And Spark peaked at number 2 in America, just like Kiss Each Other Clean did some thirty seven years later.


Perhaps there are no other clear distinctions than the penultimate chart position between these two records, but that radio-friendly thrill is inherent in both. It’s an aspect that ensures both records play on the aural senses first and foremost, both artists demanding your attention through the way their records sound more than what they have to say. It was a first for Mitchell, and it’s a continuation for Beam. Its predecessor, The Shepherd’s Dog, was a huge leap in expanding Iron & Wine’s palette, from multi-tracking vocals through a leslie speaker (Carousel), to flirting with reggae (Wolves (Song Of The Shepherd’s Dog)) and utilising West African juju (House By The Sea). Kiss Each Other Clean is in some sense an even more ambitious undertaking, but the songs feel more individualistic, more singular and less the sum of their parts. Walking Far From Home was the album’s lead single and first indicator of the continued use of multi-layered vocals Beam has become so fond of. It’s a roaming and far-flung beast of a song that somehow continues to wander and divert itself along almost five unrelenting minutes, a theme extended on the album’s centerpiece Rabbit Will Run. It provides a refreshing new dimension to Iron & Wine’s expanding soundworld, and Rabbit Will Run is the boldest example of Beam really pushing himself on the production aesthetic, reveling in a vocal melody that dances something ominous atop scrupulous instrumentation whilst oddly looping pan flute sections and thumb piano bubble beneath.


This infusion, almost tropical, is more than a mere experiment, and Beam has developed a taste for truly innovative, inverted melodies, but one can see how this could pose a problem for long time fans of Iron & Wine’s less complex arrangements; Rabbit Will Run is certainly a far cry from the whispers-through-tall-grass melancholia of Jezebel or Cinder And Smoke. There are more restrained moments, however. Observe how Tree By The River and Godless Brother In Love bask in languid, cradling arrangements, the former’s nostalgic declarations carried along by layered choral backing vocals, whilst the latter swells with piano and harp to proportions that belie its gradual curvature.


The vintage funk of the record is particularly worth mentioning since it runs through half the songs here, even the ones that stay within familiar time signatures. Take Me And Lazarus, for example, with its teasing saxophone and retro bass, or the knowingly MOR doo-wop of Half Moon, both of which feel like mere dilutions to the drunken grooves of Big Burned Hand. In a way it’s the most outlandish and downright daring thing of Beam’s career thus far and it fails and succeeds in equal measure. Somehow hearing Beam curse sounds crude and a bit irrelevant to the narrative in question, and yet it really inspires a Stevie Wonder-esque groove that’s hard to shake with each mention of the lion and lamb. The penultimate Glad Man Singing rolls forth with swelling backing vocals whilst piano and marimba keep building upon curiously Biblical imagery. It sounds in equal parts hymnal and elemental, undeniably glorious in its panorama. Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me closes the album and builds to a climax over seven minutes, partly the result of some serious repetition and partly the result of such detailed instrumentation which requires time to unfold, throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the mix.


Sam Beam has gradually developed into a fully-realised musician in the truest sense of the word, and it makes sense that part of developing his sound is a process of experimentation and refinement, the result of many years spent tinkering around in the studio. Kiss Each Other Clean is at first startling, perhaps even offensive, to ears that arched so attentively to the troubadour of Our Endless Numbered Days. After a year, it’s telling that Kiss Each Other Clean should ingratiate itself so neatly within Iron & Wine’s repertoire. Ultimately, it’s important to understand that Beam is no longer making music for anyone other than himself. He’s clearly treading the well-worn path of many of his predecessors, especially Joni Mitchell (Don Juan, anyone?) and virtually everything that followed Court And Spark. For this he should be commended. Where the results falter is when there should be cause for concern. As it stands, Beam has proven he can successfully marry the ordinary with the extraordinary on a record worthy of more than just the FM, radio-friendly music he seeks to draw from.