Album Review: Calexico And Iron & Wine – Years To Burn

Fourteen years ago, in 2005, Calexico and Iron & Wine released an EP titled In The Reins. It was a melancholy pastoral journey through blue-collar America, one that drew on the strengths of Calexico as a full band, and Sam Beam’s painterly lyricism. After the better part of two decades that bright pairing seems like a dream.

Today, the world seems like a bin-fire, and to have new material from them (a whole album, no less) feels like a gift, secret evidence of some bucolic Camelot we can escape to for an hour.

Hushed voices sing of farmland and family and stolen kisses amid cornrows, the 'country'-ness of the music sounding more like folk balladry than pickup truck blues. Beam’s imagery shines brighter than Calexico’s Joey Burns’ wordplay, but the latter’s skill with denser arrangements gives the album dramatic weight, with sophisticated minor-key pathos in abundance.

Father Mountain is a triumph that can likely be pinned on Beam – the gentle clockwork rhythms dovetailing with the central tale of a soft-focus love affair is textbook Iron & Wine. Likewise, it’s easy to pinpoint the cinematic SoCal borderland hews being contributed elsewhere (The Bitter Suite – Pajaro / Evil Eye / Tennessee Train) via Burns and John Convertino. The two vibes marry well, with the result resembling the feeling of gazing over a scarlet mesa at dusk, and lonely beers and lightning bugs after long days of physical work.

This is Americana done right, without affectation or crude, broad romanticism. It’s warm, grand and deeply comforting.