#hen's teeth

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Bon Matin 💙🎸🆕️ 😊

Iron & Wine (feat.I'm With Her) 🎶 Wait Up

(Hen's Teeth)

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- HEN’S TEETH -

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Iron & Wine — Hen’s Teeth (Sub Pop)

Photo by Kim Black

Like its predecessor Light Verse, Hen’s Teeth sticks to the subtler end of Iron and Wine’s aesthetic. Its songs, which came from the same sessions as the previous record, seem stripped back and personal, quiet enough for Sam Beam’s delicate falsetto to find a central place for itself. It is not as mesmeric as the baked, Afro-blues-psychedelia of Shepherd’s Dog (to my ears, still the one to beat), nor as richly, texturally communal as the albums with Calexico. The songs start bare and personal, and if they swell with strings or rollick with muted celebration (as in whirling “In Your Ocean”) they never really escape the quiet, contemplative category.

Not that this is an entirely bad thing. There are still effortlessly shapely melodies, fitted like skin with perceptive turns of phrase. There are still very lovely arrangements, a little airy this time around, but neither slack nor stuffed nor overly attention hungry. And the musicianship is, as always, excellent. Beam has been doing this for a long time. He knows what it should sound like, and he works with an unending litany of Americana and indie pop players who understand how to make his ideas materialize.

Here the marquee guest is I’m With Her, an alt-folk trio made of up Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins. They appear twice on Hen’s Teeth, first on “Robin’s Egg,” a whipped cream bon bon of breezy vocals and swirling dissolving sonic textures. Later in the sequencing “Wait Up,” is roughed-up a bit more, tousled really, by the twitch of acoustic bass, the clackety-pop of percussion, but also very sleek. The voices have been sanded down, so that, beyond Beam, you can’t make out their individual characteristics; it’s pretty but leaves no mark.

Not so for opener “Roses,” temperate in sonics but studded with poetry so casually delivered that you don’t immediate recognize its sharpness. The oblique theme is lifelong partnership, a relationship as built in and comfortable as Beam’s unassuming songs. “Running to the one you love forever, laughing into each other’s empty mouth,” Beam murmurs, his voice just over a whisper but easily the center of the piece. He sells the long note that finishes the chorus, the volume building but without visible strain, “Hope knows when you hammer on our heart.”

You might want more tension and drama, but for the quiet song full of intelligence and intent, Beam is about as good as it gets.

Jennifer Kelly

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Iron & Wine Announces New Album Hen’s Teeth For February 2026 Release, Shares New Single & Video “In Your Ocean”

https://music.mxdwn.com/2026/01/13/news/iron-wine-announces-new-album-hens-teeth-for-february-2026-release-shares-new-single-video-in-your-ocean/

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-HEN’S TEETH- Abruzzo Italy