Iron & Wine

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There's a grandeur underlying the puckish coating on 'Light Verse' - Sam Beam's poetic lyrics tumble from a tongue-filled cheek with playfulness, puns, and sheer language revelry whilst the instrumentation swoops and soars like musical murmurations. Beam, lyrically, once again takes focus on a series of both fictional and personal insights, filled with desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, offering promise and a dose of heartache, tears and laughter, life and love. Taking stock in the album’s title, he jokes, “'Light verse' is a form of poetry about playful themes that often uses nonsense and wordplay, and it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album!…. Just kidding….” While, true, this may be Iron & Wine’s most playful record, Beam says the title mostly reflects the way the songs were born with joy after the heaviness and anxiety of the pandemic. Where recent records, like 'Beast Epic' or 'Weed Garden', gave air to the disquiet of middle-aged frailty and brokenness, these songs trade that for the focus that acceptance can bring. Moment by moment, they delight in being pointed or silly (or both) and attempt beauty over prettiness. Fashioned as an album that should be taken as a whole, it sounds lovingly handmade and self-assured as a secret handshake. Track by track, its equal parts elegy, kaleidoscope, truth, and dare.