Iron & Wine

★★★★

Archive Series Volume No.5 : Tallahassee Recordings SUB POP. CD/DL/LP

The Dead Sea Scrolls, or near as dammit, of Iron & Wine.

The latest record in the archive series that Sam Beam instigated six years ago is a slice of pre-history – Tallahassee, the lost debut album that dates back to 1988-9, three years before Iron & Wine's official Sub Pop debut The

Creek Drank The Cradle (2002). Beam was a film student then, as was EJ Holowicki, his roommate, who’s the other of the two musicians on this stripped-down, home-made, 11-song collection. EJ’s on bass, and Beam on guitar, harmonica (not much more than a dash), drums (which have an oddly drum-machine quality) and those hushed, sometimes doubled gauzy, hypnotic vocals. There’s a feast here for lovers of lo-fi folk: opener Why I Hate Winter, solemn and ponderous with slices of guitar sounding like sleet; the folk-Americana of John’s Glass Eye and Ex-Lover Lucy Jones; and waltz-time low-voiced closer Valentine. Sylvie Simmons