Secret Meeting score: 78
by Philip Moss
For this new EP, North Carolina based singer/songwriter, Sam Beam aka Iron & Wine had to go digging in the weeds – sure that there was still material of relevance in the offcuts from last year’s album, Beast Epic. And having worked the songs up while still on the road, Beam returned to Wilco’s Loft Studios in Chicago- with his touring band in tow.
Opening track and the lead single from the collection, What Hurts Worse, is a beautifully embellished slab of Americana that more than stands up to the material deemed worthy of a place on the Grammy nominated Beast Epic, emphasising the notion that Weed Garden is a companion piece, rather than an outtakes collection.
The oldest song here is Waves of Galveston – first being aired way back in 2013 on the Ghost on Ghost tour. But as so often can be the case, it’s about finding the right home. Over a warm acoustic guitar, banjos weave in and out, with Beam’s voice as magnificent as ever- moving from a lovely verse melody reminiscent of Dear Catastrophe Waitress-era Belle and Sebastian, before falling into a shuffling, Paul Simon-evoking chorus – ‘if you can’t make the music, then you can’t have the dance, if you can’t shoot the pistol, then you can’t wear the pants’.
Of the six tunes present, only Last of Your Rock n Roll Heroes is throwaway. While penultimate track, Autumn Town Leaves, is the pièce de résistance- a charming song that carries a sumptuously hummable, poptastic melody that’s more than worth the entrance price alone- ‘In this autumn town where the leaves can fall on either side of the garden wall, we laugh all night to keep the embers glowing – some are leaping free from their moving cars, stacking stones round their broken hearts, waving down any wind that might come blowing’.
The great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, wrote – ‘Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests.’ Based on the quality of this EP, let’s just be thankful Sam Beam went back to dig through his unfinished songs, rather than leaving them on the heap.
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