5th Album with 12 Brand New Tracks! Includes Brass Instrumentation! Bonus CD!
Over the course of his ten-year career, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam has become one of today's greatest story tellers, crafting meticulous tales full of forlorn love, religious imagery and wistful dreams. Many fell in love with Iron & Wine Beam's tender and spare rendering of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights", which was featured on the Garden State soundtrack in 2002. That same year, the South Carolina-born, Texas-based Beam announced himself as a classic American tunesmith with a precocious musical signature on Iron & Wine's epically sparse debut album The Creek Drank the Cradle, followed by 2003's The Sea & The Rhythm EP, 2004's full-length Our Endless Numbered Days, 2005's Woman King EP, as well as In the Reins, a collaboration with rock band Calexico.
In 2007, Iron & Wine released the lyrically evocative, casually atmospheric The Shepherd's Dog, which debuted at No. 24 on Billboard's Top 200 Album chart and earned praise from critics, who hailed it as a major musical leap forward. In 2008, Iron & Wine's song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" was featured on the best-selling soundtrack to the movie Twilight.
Iron and Wine is proud to announce its fifth album, Ghost on Ghost (Nonesuch). Produced by Brian Deck with a group of musicians including Rob Burger, who handled arrangements for the strings and horns, Ghost on Ghost features twelve new Iron and Wine songs. For the front cover, Sam Beam selected an image from photographer Barbara Crane's "Private Views" series.
For Ghost on Ghost, Beam sought to move from what he called the anxious tension of his two previous records. This record felt like a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few, he says.
Helping achieve Beams vision was a group of stellar musicians including Rob Burger, Steve Bernstein, Brian Blade, Curtis Fowlkes, Tony Garnier, Marika Hughes, Briggan Kraus, Maxim Moston, Tony Scherr, Doug Wieselman, Kenny Wolleson, and Anja Wood. Burger (Tin Hat Trio) has worked with Beam intermittently through the years and handled arrangements for strings and horns on Ghost on Ghost.
"Working with jazz drummer Brian Blade and a standup bass and mixing together elements of country, jazz, indie rock, and soft rock, the album has a much more intimate feel that suits Beam's quietly soulful vocals much more naturally. It's still very slick and pro-sounding, but not to the point of distraction. It sounds like the work of two highly skilled craftsmen making the kind of album they should make, instead of guys trying to make something relevant and "big." Beam's songs this time are more diverse than usual... Beam is really expanding the kind of songs he is writing and doing it with a large degree of success... Bringing the scale back down to something human while injecting some jazz and sunshine into the I&W sound proves to be a very good strategy for Beam, and it makes Ghost on Ghost one of the most satisfying albums the group has done to date." - Tim Sendra, allmusic.com
Features:
150 Gram Vinyl + Bonus CD
Includes Insert with Full Lyrics
Selections:
Side A:
1. Caught in the Briars
2. The Desert Babbler
3. Joy
4. Low Light Buddy of Mine
5. Graces for Saints and Ramblers
6. Grass Widows
7. Singers and the Endless Song
Side B:
1. Sundown (Back in the Briars)
2. Winter Prayers
3. New Mexicos No Breeze
4. Lovers Revolution
5. Baby Center Stage
Over the course of his ten-year career, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam has become one of today's greatest story tellers, crafting meticulous tales full of forlorn love, religious imagery and wistful dreams. Many fell in love with Iron & Wine Beam's tender and spare rendering of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights", which was featured on the Garden State soundtrack in 2002. That same year, the South Carolina-born, Texas-based Beam announced himself as a classic American tunesmith with a precocious musical signature on Iron & Wine's epically sparse debut album The Creek Drank the Cradle, followed by 2003's The Sea & The Rhythm EP, 2004's full-length Our Endless Numbered Days, 2005's Woman King EP, as well as In the Reins, a collaboration with rock band Calexico.
In 2007, Iron & Wine released the lyrically evocative, casually atmospheric The Shepherd's Dog, which debuted at No. 24 on Billboard's Top 200 Album chart and earned praise from critics, who hailed it as a major musical leap forward. In 2008, Iron & Wine's song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" was featured on the best-selling soundtrack to the movie Twilight.
Iron and Wine is proud to announce its fifth album, Ghost on Ghost (Nonesuch). Produced by Brian Deck with a group of musicians including Rob Burger, who handled arrangements for the strings and horns, Ghost on Ghost features twelve new Iron and Wine songs. For the front cover, Sam Beam selected an image from photographer Barbara Crane's "Private Views" series.
For Ghost on Ghost, Beam sought to move from what he called the anxious tension of his two previous records. This record felt like a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few, he says.
Helping achieve Beams vision was a group of stellar musicians including Rob Burger, Steve Bernstein, Brian Blade, Curtis Fowlkes, Tony Garnier, Marika Hughes, Briggan Kraus, Maxim Moston, Tony Scherr, Doug Wieselman, Kenny Wolleson, and Anja Wood. Burger (Tin Hat Trio) has worked with Beam intermittently through the years and handled arrangements for strings and horns on Ghost on Ghost.
"Working with jazz drummer Brian Blade and a standup bass and mixing together elements of country, jazz, indie rock, and soft rock, the album has a much more intimate feel that suits Beam's quietly soulful vocals much more naturally. It's still very slick and pro-sounding, but not to the point of distraction. It sounds like the work of two highly skilled craftsmen making the kind of album they should make, instead of guys trying to make something relevant and "big." Beam's songs this time are more diverse than usual... Beam is really expanding the kind of songs he is writing and doing it with a large degree of success... Bringing the scale back down to something human while injecting some jazz and sunshine into the I&W sound proves to be a very good strategy for Beam, and it makes Ghost on Ghost one of the most satisfying albums the group has done to date." - Tim Sendra, allmusic.com
Features:
150 Gram Vinyl + Bonus CD
Includes Insert with Full Lyrics
Selections:
Side A:
1. Caught in the Briars
2. The Desert Babbler
3. Joy
4. Low Light Buddy of Mine
5. Graces for Saints and Ramblers
6. Grass Widows
7. Singers and the Endless Song
Side B:
1. Sundown (Back in the Briars)
2. Winter Prayers
3. New Mexicos No Breeze
4. Lovers Revolution
5. Baby Center Stage
