Iron and Wine’s latest collection of loosely coined folk-pop continues where 2007’s The Shepherd Dog left us, with Sam Beam continuing to shed his heart-rending plucking of old for a more richly produced, soft-pop sound. However the cryptic story-telling is still very much at the heart of Beam’s songs so his new adventures in hi-fi shouldn’t alienate fans of his previous more rustic work and should, if there’s any justice, see Beam be embraced by a much wider audience.

‘Walking Far From Home’ is a grandiose opener, with a canvas of distorted keys and joyful ooo-aaah backing vocals, building gradually with poetic lines: “I saw a car crash in the country, where the prayers run like weeds along the road”, and “”I saw flowers on a hillside and a millionaire pissing on the lawn”, Beam is rarely off his game in the lyrical department and this is no exception, sometimes though the metaphors and juxtapositions are almost too assiduous, it’s fickle to say but on occasion it sounds like an academic practice on beautiful prose as opposed to emotive auto-biographical scribbling. That’s a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things; its studious nature is only a result of Beams increasing aptitude as a writer, which he’s honed considerably throughout his career.

Some of the finest moments on Kiss Each Other Clean see Beam pushing out the envelope and embracing soul and funk, much like Joan As Police Woman’s recently released album, The Deep Field, in your head the thought of alto-sax squirts and fretless bass funking off sounds pretty horrible to say the least, but on ‘Me and Lazarus’, ‘Big Burned Hand’, and the epic closer, ‘Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me’, these disparate elements combine to startling effect, which is testament to the song-writing chops, it would appear you can throw any amount of shit at these compositions and it will turn to ear-tickling gold. Undeniably talented, Beam is tapping on a rich fountain of form and long may it continue.