Texas-based singer-songwriter type Iron & Wine, aka Samuel Beam, is known for his melodic, country-tinged Americana style. Kiss Each Other Clean is his fourth release under this moniker, and first for a major label, and continues the journey from lo-fi experimentalist to something more mainstream. The sound on this album is deeper, more textural, and by extension, somehow more affecting than previous works. There's a kind of hipster hokey spiritualism about this album, and Iron & Wine in general that can be cloying, but if you just go with it, it can also be strangely rewarding. From the album cover, a technicolour line drawing of the artist waist-deep in a river with peacocks milling around behind, down through every track, there is an overriding theme of closeness to nature.
