Iron & Wine
Archive Series Volume No. 1
Black Cricket Recording Co. 
Street: 02.24
Iron & Wine = William Fitzsimmons / Sufjan Stevens x Andrew Bird
 
Archive, put simply, is a collection of songs Samuel Beam either forgot about or never got around to doing anything with, and supposedly, a companion album to 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle. It’s just what you’d expect from Iron & Wine, soft spoken and delicate, with just a pinch of twangy Americana. I’d be doing this album a disservice by saying that it’s bedtime mu-sic. While it’s definitely soft and whispery, there’s something to be said for it’s simplicity—it adds an element of humanism to the record, like paging through a dusty diary you found in the attic. This is essentially an album of B-sides, but better. Hopefully, this will be an ongoing pro-ject for Beam—I look forward to associating Iron & Wine with this sort of sound and not that god-forsaken Postal Service cover. –Allison Shephard