3 Out Of 5 Stars
Sam Beam must be a very restless person. With each album, he presses himself towards new musical idioms, sometimes working, sometimes not. On "Ghost on Ghost," his sixth album, he decides he wants to be in the same jazzy realm as a Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell, infusing the songs with horns, piano and blues. This is one of those times where it doesn't work.Beam, as Iron and Wine, has one of the most pleasing voices in popular music. He rarely lifted himself above a whisper on classic folk albums like "The Shepherd's Dog" and "Our Endless Numbered Days," so I was surprised the first time I saw him live; he sang with a full throated tenor. He leapt to that level of singing on "Kiss Each Other Clean," an album whose sonic excursions reminded me of Lindsey Buckingham at his weirdest. "Ghost on Ghost" pulls in the reigns on that experimental project and returns to the musical. But where "Kiss" was produced in extremes, "Ghost" is over produced in a poppy-lite fashion.
Beam writes songs that are strong on melody and often strong on message. He can deliver a story-song like few men working in today's music scene. Nowhere is this more evident than "Ghost's" "Winter Prayers." Unencumbered by the dense production of much of the album, it's Beam, guitar and piano with some light percussion. It delivers its message without hindrance from the bulk of the album's near easy listening style. I still love Iron and Wine, however, I never expected Sam Beam to deliver an album so extraordinarily average. "Ghost on Ghost" is a disappointment in an otherwise stellar discography.
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