Love Letter for Fire
This slow-burning collaborative album from Jesca Hoop and Iron & Wine's Sam Beam recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes.
It’s easy to forget that Sam Beam’s first release as Iron & Wine consisted of demos for what he intended to be a more fleshed-out record. The songs on The Creek Drank The Cradle had a particular magic in that raw and sparse state, which remained in the minds of Iron And Wine fans even as Beam marched away from quiet…
Despite their disparate backgrounds, Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop have managed to make an album that’s both hushed and…
Back in the Eighties, when Lush’s first recordings appeared, it was still unusual for a band to feature more than a lone female presence, so they were trailblazers of a sort - if “trailblazing” is an apt term to apply to their shoegazing style. Oddly, their ingenue charm works more effectively in this mature reunion mode than in the gamine original: “Out Of Control” is a natural extension of that style, with Miki Berenyi’s murmurous vocals and Emma Anderson’s droning guitars creating rolling dream-pop waves, and “Lost Boy” showcasing their trademark chorus-effect guitar jangle. Romance remains their core theme, although “Rosebud” strikes out for the harsher terrain of thoughtless cruelty: “They’re just having some fun/How is it wrong, if you’re wearing a smile?”. A welcome return.
Sam Beam of Iron and Wine has never been averse to collaborating with like-minded artists, and he seems to have found an especially simpatico musical partner in Jesca Hoop.
Sam Beam (beardy man of Iron & Wine) and Jesca Hoop (brilliant diverse librettist / former nanny for Tom Waits) have joined forces to create a fine,