So just when is Sam Beam going to put out a new album? Ever since I've ventured into the sparse, folksy, Southern-bred world of Iron & Wine (which is Sam's stage name), I've been intrigued by the things that one man can do with a hushed voice and the different sounds that can be coaxed out of an acoustic guitar. But the only proper album this guy has that I've really gotten into is 2004's Our Endless Numbered Days. That was a sublime piece of work, but aside from that, he only has one other album (which is a bunch of 4-track recordings - I'm not really a lo-fi kind of guy) and a string of EPs. Some of that EP work turned out to be really good, especially last year's Woman King EP, which found Beam fiddling around with more aggressive textures in places and creating a haunting ode to womanhood. If that EP had been a full album, it most certainly would have been a contender for last year's Top 10, and if he had released a full album not long after that, the same would likely be true. Instead, he put out another really good EP. Sigh. An album's worth of solid material, but I'd have to stop and change CDs to listen to it all. Way to disqualify yourself from this critic's list, dude.

But that second EP from 2005 is still worth devoting half an hour of your time to. It's actually not one that Beam can take all of the credit for (though he did write all of the songs). Here, he collaborated with the Southwestern indie rock outfit Calexico, and the results are delicious enough to make me think Beam should work with a full band more often. The presence of multiple players doesn't ruin the intimacy of Beam's music, but it's intriguing to hear Deep South and Southwest collide in a mixture that is part swamp and part desert, and maybe a little snow-covered forest, too. Trumpets appear in a few songs, bringing a little bit of jazzy inspiration, and steel guitars drip all over a few of these songs, as if the heyday of 70's soft-rock radio never ended. At times it's enough to make you long for an alcoholic beverage to cry over (Sam's long-lost brother Jim Beam can probably help you with that), but I don't find it overly depressing. It's just a little more... dangerous than some of his past work. If you enjoyed the down-and-dirty "Evening on the Ground" and the temptation-soaked "Grey Stables" from the last EP, then nothing here will shock you in a bad way. I'm the type who can have a little trouble with some of these lyrics from time to time, but then I remember that the stories Beam tells are not necessarily from the first-person perspective, and he's not necessarily trying to redeem these characters, either. They just are what they are - drifters, cheaters, outlaws. Can't get more Western than that, I guess.

He Lays in the Reigns
One more kiss tonight from some tall stable girl
She's like grace from the earth
When you're all tuckered out and tame...
The collaboration opens with soft guitar strumming and light piano creating a circling rhythm of 6/8, as Sam introduces a character who is either running toward or away from something as fast as his horse will take him. (It's notable that his horse is grey and the girl he apparently spent the night with was a stable girl... recurring theme from the last EP?) I don't have too much time to contemplate this before the steel guitar floats in, with that ghostly sliding sound that immediately gives away the strong country influence. And then, from out of nowhere, we get a Spanish opera singer. No joke! He sounds pretty good, but the effect is about as jarring as when Pavarotti popped out in the middle of U2's "Miss Sarajevo". A few more verses go by, and the song begins to open up into a tense semi-jam, with light electric guitar melding with all of the other instruments, for a song that has a strong "full band" feel to it without crowding out the sense of solitude and the powerful desert imagery that Sam's lyrics give off.

Prison on Route 41
I've a reason for my absentee
And no lack of love for my dear family
But my savior is not Christ the Lord
But one named Virginia, whom I live my life for...
Another song in 6/8, this time played much slower - this is the sort of lazy, slow-trotting feel of a cowboy wiped out from a long overnight run, stumbling into a town at the crack of dawn and realizing there's nobody there to greet him. OK, I made all that up based on the music - the lyrics are actually about a man whose family is mostly incarcerated. The slide guitar - whose presence is more prominent by default, as the rest of the band is more quiet - paints a distant picture of a correction facility out in the middle of nowhere, a place that our protagonist has only avoided due to the influence of his sweet wife. I was a bit irked at first when Sam insisted that this woman was the character's savior instead of "Christ the Lord", but I don't think the point is to knock religion, it's simply to say that a person who cared saved him from a tragic fate. Neat little touches such as banjo, harmonica, and lonesome whistling make this track an early highlight. It's the best prison song I've heard since Thrice's "The Earth Will Shake", which is practically the antithesis of this, musically speaking.

A History of Lovers
I came for my woman, he came with a razor blade
Bound like us all for the ocean
I hope that she's happy, I'm blamed for the death
Of a man who would take her from me...
In the Reins finds its first upbeat tune here, with a strong guitar strum meeting drums and more of that wispy slide guitar... OK, it's not really that upbeat, but if you're an Iron & Wine fan, you'd practically be rocking out at this point. Sam Beam harmonizes nicely with Calexico's singer here, and it's that band's influence the really gives the song character, especially when they bring in their mariachi-influenced horn section later on. I was previously annoyed with "Evening on the Ground" for throwing the word "f*ck" into an otherwise stellar song - I feel the same here, though I guess I can admit that the subject matter (which deals with a love triangle that gets quite ugly) might make it work in context - "Cuddle some men, they'll remember you bitterly. F*ck 'em, they'll come back for more" is the line in question, which makes an interesting observation about a male character who prefers aggression to affection in the bedroom. The clincher is, of course, that his woman loves another man, and when things come to a head between the two of them, Sam's character ends up killing the other guy, further driving away a woman who already thought the other guy was better than him. It's a harrowing tale, so the fact that the music is upbeat and the melody almost cheery gives it a perversely entertaining feel.

Red Dust
Dust gets dead, the sun gone down
Danny's boy lies in the ground
Guitar on the dead boy's chest
Devil's granting a last request...
This one treads a little closer to Sam Beam's "Deep South" territory, similar to past cuts such as "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven" and "Free Until They Cut Me Down", but a little less restrained. It starting out with a slow, twangy guitar part that begins to speed up as the song picks up momentum. The effect is slightly bluesy, especially when electric guitar, organ, and harmonica join the fray after the first verse. The song seems to be more about jamming than expressing a fully realized thought - what few words there are seem to allude to a guitar-playing man who made a deal with the devil and lost his son in the process. It's creepy, and it's definitely got that "backwoods folk tale that only the 20-odd people in the local village know anything about" feel to it. But it's a fun jam while it lasts.

16, Maybe Less
I met my wife at a party when I drank too much
My son is married and tells me we don't talk enough
Call it predictable, yesterday my dream was of you...
This track might win my vote for best lyrics on the album. Its slow, shuffling rhythm, repetitive chord progression, and sleepy slide guitar made sure that it took me a while to fully appreciate it, but this one is definitely one of Sam Beam's more fully realized and heartbreaking stories. He's singing from the point of view of a man, reminiscing on (or fantasizing about) a tryst in the woods with a forbidden woman. This may have come about as a result of a lonely marriage to a woman he settled down with in haste - even his own son sees fit to remind him that they're basically strangers living in the same house. So it could be about wanting to have an affair (Beam has tackled the subject before), or the dream woman could actually be his wife, back when she was around the titular age, and he simply wants to turn back the clock and experience love like it was when they were young. Beam's sister helps out on background vocals, and as always, the duet is lovely. I picture a lot of grey and white when listening to the song, probably because he mentions meeting her in the woods on Christmas Eve, and because the music is so beautifully somber.

Burn That Broken Bed
How do you bust the clouds?
Head on the ground and feeling what you've seen
I wanna scope you out
I wanna be your eyes and show you me...
I think this is my favorite track overall on this EP. It's little more than a slow, dark, two-chord rumination on what sounds like another cheating lover, but what in lacks in lyrics, it makes up for with the smoky muted trumpet that totally ends up defining the song. It's the jazziest moment on the record, with the light shuffling and clicking of the drums and the delicate hammer-on style of acoustic guitar picking supporting a long and satisfying trumpet solo that gets pretty intense at its peak. Some may find it tiresome due to its five-minute length, but I find it to be quite generous.

Dead Man's Will
Give this string to my mother
It pulled the baby teeth she keeps inside the drawer
Give this ring to my lover
I was scared and stupid not to ask for her hand long before...
Compared to the rest of the album, this track feels a little too plain spoken. I guess I'd file it with other Iron & Wine tracks such as "In My Lady's House" or "Passing Afternoon" that have some lovely lyrics, but don't do much for me musically. It's more of a basic folk ballad, with Beam offering mundane objects to family members and loved ones in his last will and testament. Each object turns out to mean something to each person - it's a sad but smartly detailed account of the ways that this man expresses love in his dying words without necessarily verbalizing it.

And that's the whole shebang. I can't help but feel like we deserved at least four more songs' worth of this stuff, because for the most part, these indie wunderkinds are a match made in Heaven. (Apparently they embarked on a tour to promote the EP, and I'm tantalized to think what some of I&W's other songs might sound like with Calexico as a backing band. I'd probably wonder the same the other way around if I knew anything about Calexico's other work.) In the Reins will do as a holdover until Beam gets another full album out - but come on, man, 2006 had better be your year! We need a good, uninterrupted 45 minutes or so of the bittersweet acoustic bliss and whatever unexpected sounds he chooses to work into the mix.

And hey, if he's gonna do another collaboration, how 'bout going even further Southwest and incorporating some Hawaiian music? Yeah, I can just imagine it now... songs to cry in your piņa colada to while you watch an achingly gorgeous tropical sunset. (Hmmm, on second thought, maybe he'd better stick to the mainland.)

OVERALL WORTH:
He Lays in the Reigns $1
Prison on Route 41 $1.50
A History of Lovers $1.50
Red Dust $1
16, Maybe Less $2
Burn That Broken Bed $2
Dead Man's Will $.50
TOTAL: $9.50

Band Members:
Sam Beam: Lead vocals, acoustic guitar
Joey Burns: Vocals, guitar
John Convertino: drums, percussion
Paul Niehaus: Pedal steel, guitar
Jacob Valenzuela: Keyboards, piano, trumpet, vibes
Martin Wenk: Accordion, guitar, synthesizers, trumpet, vibes
Volker Zander: Upright & electric bass

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening