Iron & Wine has been announced for a Dublin Valentine’s day show at The Helix on Wednesday 14 February.
Sam Beam will be joined by Half Waif on the night.
Tickets: โฌ32.50 on sale now through Ticketmaster & usual outlets nationwide.
Iron & Wine released a new album in August called Beast Epic of which he wrote about the following:
I must confess that Iโve always shied away from album introductions citing the usual “dancing to architecture” cop out. Speaking to their own work is uncomfortable for many artists, but Iโve made a new album called Beast Epic which is important to me and I wanted to take a moment to talk about why. Iโve been releasing music for about fifteen years now and I feel very blessed to have put out five other full lengths, many EPs and singles, a few collaborations with people much more talented than myself, and made contributions to numerous movie scores and soundtracks. This is my sixth collection of new Iron & Wine material and Iโm happy to say that itโs my fourth for Sub Pop Records.
Itโs a warm and serendipitous time to be reuniting with my Seattle friends because I feel thereโs a certain kinship between this new collection of songs and my earliest material, which Sub Pop was kind enough to release. In hindsight, both The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) epitomize a reflective and confessional songwriting style (although done with my own ferocious commitment to understatement, of course). I have been and always will be fascinated by the way time asserts itself on our bodies and our hearts. The ferris wheel keeps spinning and weโre constantly approaching, leaving or returning to something totally unexpected or startlingly familiar. The rite of passage is an image I’ve returned to often because I feel weโre all constantly in some stage of transition. Beast Epic is saturated with this idea but in a different way simply because each time I return to the theme, Iโve collected new experiences to draw from. Where the older songs painted a picture of youth moving wide-eyed into adulthoodโs violent pleasures and disappointments, this collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up after youโve already grown up. For me, that experience has been more generous in its gifts and darker in its tragedies.
The sound of Beast Epic harks back to previous work, in a way, as well. By employing the old discipline of recording everything live and doing minimal overdubbing, I feel like it wears both its achievements and its imperfections on its sleeve. Over the years, Iโve enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sonics and songwriting styles and all that traveled distance is evident in the feel and the arrangements here, but the muscles seemed to have relaxed and been allowed to effortlessly do what they do best.โจIโve been fortunate to get to play with some very talented musicians over the years who are both uniquely intuitive and also expressive in exciting ways. This group was no different. We spent about two weeks recording and mixing but mostly laughing at The Loft in Chicago.
To be honest, Iโve named this record BEAST EPIC mostly because it sounds really fucking cool! However, with that said and perhaps to be completely honest, โa story where animals talk and act like peopleโ sounds like the perfect description for the life of any of us. If not that, then itโs at least perfect for any group of songs Iโve ever tried to make. I hope you enjoy it. โ Sam Beam, Iron & Wine.