Review: Iron & Wine is in fine voice on Hen’s Teeth

March 15, 2026

Listening to Sam Beam’s first releases as Iron & Wine felt like going back in time. They were recorded at home to analogue tape, and the mixture of grainy fidelity with his love for Southern American folk traditions (and instruments like banjo), meant the tunes emerged with a mix of nostalgia and modern edge.

Back then his songs were broadly split into two categories: spikier, Southern-fried blues numbers sitting alongside gorgeous ballads. Beam’s gentle voice and knack for harmonies meant the latter became sought-after soundtrack fodder, and all this time later are as tear-jerking as ever.

As his career progressed and recording studios entered the equation, Iron and Wine started to incorporate instruments and influences from elsewhere, like jazz, soul, and the songs which emanated from 1970s California, specifically Laurel Canyon.

The album cover for Hen’s Teeth by Iron and Wine.

Supplied

. His psychedelic impulses and experimentation kept things slightly edgy, but there was no denying the albums felt safer.

2024’s Light Verse was his first solo outing in seven years, and, despite some opulent string parts, it was his least self-conscious work in some time, as if he’d reconciled and reprioritised during the break.

Appropriately, it was recorded in Laurel Canyon, and these fruitful sessions have birthed a sister album called Hen’s Teeth.

It’s initially hard to tell what differentiates the two records (although a safe assumption is that the songs just fit together nicely in these groupings). The cover art for Hen’s Teeth is red, while Light Verse’s is blue. Both feature lush orchestration, but it’s more bombastic on the new collection, and the music occasionally more ominous.

But these are surface considerations, and the pair could easily be one long LP. More importantly, the songs feel at peace with themselves; dalliances in arrangement or structure feel less forced than they have in the past. These include elements of Tropicalia on ‘Defiance, Ohio’, or the blue-note freakout that ends ‘Roses’.

‘Robin’s Egg’ feels like new territory for Beam, in that it’s particularly fleet-footed and chirpy. He’s aided by the trio I’m With Her, who help with lead vocals as well as instrumentation. The song includes the phrase “loosey-goosey”, which gives a good sense of its vibe. There’s even a castanet.

I’m With Her appear again on ‘Wait Up’. It’s the record’s most gorgeous track, melancholy and hopeful, and spine-tingling in the moments the singers’ voices merge in harmony.

Those harmonies have always been a big part of Iron & Wine’s appeal. In 2005 I saw him perform two nights in a row in Melbourne, playing alone aside from his sister on backing vocals. Several songs on ‘Robin’s Egg’ feature Arden Beam – Sam’s daughter – doing the same.

Sam Beam.

Kim Black

He’s the kind of musician who can command a stage on his own (having a pitch-perfect, beautifully-timbred voice helps a lot), but on record prefers to surround himself with other musicians (and regularly talks about enjoying collaboration). Those early, sparse recordings still sound incredible, but the lonely approach clearly didn’t suit Beam. That makes sense for someone whose music is so deeply human.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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