Beast Epic is New at WUVT

Even though it’s only thirty-five minutes this is an album that takes its time because, as Sam Bean says in the opening lyrics of the album, “Our winters keep running us down”, meaning time goes by fast. From the first song, it’s clear that this album is a deliberate step back to Sam’s earlier works. This is because he’s returning to a topic that’s often found its way into much of Sam’s songwriting: time. He discusses this concept through growth and its ugly reflection, decay. He also loves to blur the lines between nature and humans. It’s begins in the title, Beast Epic, which refers to a story that features sentient animals. The album however focus on the life and complex emotions of humans, which would seem counterintuitive. On top of that, he uses vivid nature metaphors. For example, in “Call it Dreaming” Sam muses on how the “rain softly kisses us on the face” as a way to express how traditionally negative things can be viewed in a positive light.

Sonically, the arrangements are very simple. The glitz of his most recent work has been stripped away to just guitar, banjo, bass, and percussion with an occasional violin and cello thrown in. The front half of the album is typical Iron and Wine with very soft acoustic backgrounds over the sweet lyricism from Sam Bean. Towards the back half of the album, Sam seems to be having a lot of fun experimenting with a more jovial sound. Specifically in “About a Bruise”, the plucky guitar and banjo over top some bouncy vocals from Sam lead to a sound that I’ve never heard from Iron & Wine. However, it quickly regresses back to the familiar sound in the final two tracks. It reflects the fleeting youth that Sam doesn’t want us to try and capture but rather appreciate as ephemeral.

Sam doesn’t fear death and isn’t shaken by his prime passing. This can be seen in the music video for Thomas County Law where an old preacher, played by Sam, prepares for his own funeral and the lyrics of the song are the sermon. He explains this idea metaphorically through the lyrics “No one looks away when the sun goes down”. Along the same lines as the preacher, Sam brings up religion a lot throughout this record with allusions to Jesus and God. These biblical references like “claim your ghost” (i.e. the Holy Ghost) or “the hands of the wrong prophet” serve to further the idea that passage of time is not meant to be viewed in a negative light. Sam was raised in the Bible Belt, so religion has played a part in his life. Religion preaches death as the beginning of a new life. However, I don’t believe that to be his message here, because there is absolutely an appreciation of life in this album. Religious allusions are certainly interwoven throughout this album but I think they run tangential to the importance of the natural world. Basically what Sam is trying to convey here is that humans exist in a state of flux between the natural and the supernatural. Sam speaks on this in the albums most orchestral and sweeping track “Call it Dreaming”. In the chorus, Sam claims “the sun isn’t only sinking fast”, meaning there’s more to the end then just the passage of time. Then he follows that statement up with “the time of our lives is all we have”, which is a fairly atheistic point of view. I think the point he wants to make is that we shouldn’t resent age as it comes to us but also enjoy youth while we can.

Beast Epic is Sam’s ode to the passage of time. He examines it from spiritual, natural, and animalistic perspectives. He documents what he feels to be emotions that are necessarily human from betrayed despair in “Bitter Truth” to blissful spontaneity in “About a Bruise”. What makes this album such a compelling listen is the range of emotions and sounds that are covered in such a short period of time. Sam discusses his perspective on life, death, humanity, religion, and nature into just eleven songs. To him, life is not looking away when the sun goes down, weeping and calling it singing, and lying in someone’s arms one last time. What he wants to make clear is that time is made to be appreciated and that growing up isn’t a punishment, it’s an epic: a Beast Epic.

Related posts:

Investment has always been a rich man’s game. The rich always get more opportunities to multiply their money. Common folks are left with very little to invest in. The U.S. Securities and Exchange…

Eu sou um estudioso do trabalho, mais especificamente na linha de como o que somos biologicamente impacta, tanto positiva quanto negativamente, o que somos como profissionais. Cara, desde o advento…