Iron & Wine
Our Endless Numbered Days
(Sub Pop)
★★★★

IN THE mid-2000s it was difficult to escape the sound and influence of US singer-songwriter Sam Beam — AKA Iron & Wine, in indie music circles — especially his career-high second album Our Endless Numbered Days.

Re-released with eight demos to celebrate its 15th anniversary the record has, if anything, improved with age. Beam’s hushed vocals and acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin and slide guitar playing fashions a deeply intimate and thoughtful atmosphere, his Southern folk akin to your favourite jumper — warm, familiar and calming.

Like the album title, Naked As We Come — a song of exquisite beauty — is a meditation on the passing of time and mortality. Elsewhere there are summer memories on the finger-picked Sunset Soon Forgotten and the keys-assisted Passing Afternoon is a sentimental, poetic closer.

Up there with the best of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith.

TEEN
Good Fruit
(Carpark Records)
★★

SYNTH-POP is close to becoming to the 2010s what guitar bands were to the previous two decades — the dominant indie music form.

Which means that those artists who trade in the trendy sub-genre, such as Brooklyn’s sister trio TEEN, arguably have to do more to stand out from the crowded competition.

Sonically adventurous and highly produced, the band’s fourth long player Good Fruit — recorded in Montreal and New York City — certainly has many interesting things going for it.

But it never quite hits the spot for me. Runner, apparently about fleeing a relationship as a partner tries to get closer, is an exciting, very danceable track but it feels like there is too much happening sound-wise, creating a clattering soundscape.

Closing pop ballad Pretend, which slows things down and demotes the beats and synths, is a welcome respite.

Chick Corea
Piano Improvisations Vol. 1
(ECM Records)
★★★★

RE-RELEASED as part of the Touchstone 2019 series — 50 reissues marking half a century of European jazz label ECM Records — Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 was recorded over two days in Oslo in 1971.

Alongside Keith Jarrett’s Facing You from a year later, Chick Corea’s solo playing established a central strand in the record label’s now familiar sound and aesthetic. And while it doesn’t quite match the dazzling brilliance of Jarrett’s early masterpiece, it’s a hugely enjoyable set in its own right.

Made up of short pieces, much like recordings of Chopin’s nocturnes, Noon Song is a beautiful, deeply romantic opener, while Where Are They Now? — A Suite Of Eight Pictures is expansive and stimulating, moving from the soft lyricism of Picture 1 to the frenetic Picture 6.

A key moment in the legendary jazz pianist’s long and musically diverse career.