Iron & Wine - Shepherd's Dog - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This double CD/triple LP collects songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released and 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 is broken into two sections. The first is an assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and the second highlights moments captured in the studio with the help of other musicians, friends, and engineers.

Iron and Wine's last (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 it's 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, Swordfish trombones, 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.

On his second full-length, Sam Beam Inchlaunches balloons of sweetly whispered regret over trance-inducing backwoods string arrangements and watches them float away, his heart in tow - Entertainment Weekly. InchEqually assured with sweetly lilting pop and doom struck ballads, Beam invests these songs with hypnotic beauty and sparkling melody, making them as accessible as accessible as they are affecting - the OnionInch