Preempting the Backlash: Kiss Each Other Clean

The new Iron and Wine album is streaming, and it's fantastic, and before you continue reading you should click the above link and start streaming the record. And with the album's impending release, it's only a matter of days before the reviews come cresting in. Stereogum's Premature Evaluation this week set the tone for what I expect many of the reviews to ultimately insist:

"[Kiss Each Other Clean] sounds more constructed and (over, over) produced than his past records. It's a bit like Sufjan's recent folksy electronics, only less arresting."

and

"At their core, many of the 10 songs on Kiss Each Other Clean are good ones, but the more-is-more production tends to mar and bury that fact."

Now, before I continue, it's helpful to point toward two specific tracks on Kiss Each Other Clean, two that I'm singling out because I think they're the album's strongest offerings. The first track, "Walking Far From Home," offers—in terms of core songwriting—a familiar Iron and Wine structure: A verse-driven song that hinges on a central phrase or refrain, image-heavy lyrics, and a slow/looping melody. What's compelling within this track, however, is the way in which the additional vocals and instruments seem to punctuate the song. After a handful of listens, I can't find a melody stronger than those of the central main and circular background vocals. This feels much different (and more interesting than) much of Beam's other work, which—though textured—frequently feels built on central guitar melodies.

Kiss Each Other Clean's third track, "Tree By The River," is a much more conventional (and instantly likeable) pop-song, and it's exactly the kind of thing that I suspect will drive the backlash. This is unfortunate. "Tree By The River," like much of this record, feels like it's channeling Van Morrison, like it's a forgotten product of 70s radio. I love it. And I especially love how far it stands from early (and just as good) Iron and Wine tracks like "Lion's Mane" or the more recent "Boy with a Coin." This is an artist pushing at his boundaries, feeling his way through new influences and new configurations. And—beyond just the strength of the record—there's something to applaud there.

I know that not everyone will feel the same, and that's fine as well. What bothers me about reviews like Stereogum's, however, is the reliance on terms like "over, over produced" and "more-is-more production." What does that even mean? Sure, stack "Walking Far From Home" against "The Sea and the Rhythm" and you'll hear a significant increase in production values and sonic spectrum. This is a rather obvious assertion: One was recorded in Beam's house about a decade ago, while the other was recorded in a proper studio this year. That'll net some difference in production. Beyond that, however, "over-production" strikes me as one of those nebulous critical terms without weight, a vague way of saying, "This album sounds too pretty." I think there are instances where too much studio gloss can ruin a record (I'm looking at you, Jimmy Eat World), where post-production numbs a song, removing some of the rawness that (rock especially) music might demand. But there are just as many instances where a band manages something amazing in the studio, using a large recording budget to realize a specific sound. (Superdrag's Head Trip in Every Key, a largely forgotten late-90s records, is one of my favorite examples of this. It's a beautiful album.) And it's also entirely possible to produce a sort of faux lo-fi sound; the right budget and pro tools rig can make many sounds possible.

My point in this is to say that critiques of Kiss Each Other Clean as overproduced or manufactured are mostly rubbish. Stereogum notes a difference between this record and Sufjan's newest, the latter of which is more arresting. I'd agree. But the comparison isn't fair: Sufjan is making a different kind of album, one with a different motivation (a meditation on the body, as I see it) while Beam is forging a contemporary homage to 70s radio pop—that still, at its core, maintains many of the Iron and Wine conventions that drove his early albums. Sure, any number of Iron and Wine fans are going to hold out hope for another acoustic album, one that's just a guy in his bedroom recoding on a four track. Fair enough. But artistic trajectories exist on a continuum: There's an arc between, say, Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and American Pastoral, and—to me—the development that occurred between those books is just as compelling as either of the novels themselves.

And after my first few spins of Kiss Each Other Clean, I'm fairly sure that it won't be my favorite Iron and Wine album. What I can also see, however, is a strong and fascinating record, one that marks an artist moving far beyond his first bedroom tapes and the experiments that followed. And we still have those tapes and all the great records that followed them, so: When you see the somewhat expected round of critiques that hail this album as "over-produced" and the product of major label money, just nod your head and press repeat on "Walking Far From Home." Beam's mix of vocals and instruments are far more compelling than the arguments made thus far about them.