beast epic. n. A long, usually allegorical verse narrative in which the charactersare animals with human feelings and motives.

I must confess that I’ve 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 I’ve made a new album called Beast Epic
which is important to me and I wanted to take a moment to talk about why. I’ve
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 I’m happy to say that it’s my fourth for Sub Pop Records.

It’s a warm and serendipitous time to be reuniting with my Seattle friends
because I feel there’s 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 we’re 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 we’re 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, I’ve collected
new experiences to draw from. Where the older songs painted a picture of youth
moving wide-eyed into adulthood’s violent pleasures and disappointments, this
collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up after you’ve 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, I’ve 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.
I’ve 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, I’ve named this record BEAST EPIC mostly because it
sounds really fucking cool! However, with that said and perhaps to be completely
honest, “a story where animals talk and act like people” sounds like the perfect
description for the life of any of us. If not that, then it’s at least perfect for any
group of songs I’ve ever tried to make. I hope you enjoy it. — Sam Beam, Iron
& Wine.