Calexico and Iron & Wine - Years To Burn

 

All-new collaboration featuring Calexico and Iron & Wine

Calexico and Iron & Wine have announced Years to Burn, their first full-length album together, available from Sub Pop Records June 14. The lead track is "Father Mountain."

Calexico and Iron & Wine first made an artistic connection with In the Reins, the 2005 EP that brought Sam Beam, Joey Burns and John Convertino together. The acclaimed collaboration introduced both acts to wider audiences and broadened Beam's artistic horizons, but it was the shared experience of touring together in the tradition of Bob Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Revue" that cemented the bond.

Years to Burn was recorded in Nashville with noted producer Matt Ross-Spang over the course of five days at Sound Emporium, a fabled studio founded in the sixties by Cowboy Jack Clement and the site of countless landmark sessions in country and rock over the ensuing decades. It features contributions from veteran Calexico trumpet player Jacob Valenzuela and Paul Niehaus on pedal steel, along with frequent Sam Beam cohorts Rob Burger (Tin Hat Trio) on piano and Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing, Fiona Apple) on bass.

Years to Burn features 10 new original compositions. While Beam wrote all the songs for "In the Reins," this recording features contributions from both Beam and Burns as well as from Convertino and those featured on the record. While the two may have taken differing approaches to songwriting, the spirit of collaboration was alive and well in the studio; Sam shared demos ahead of time and was ready for the others to contribute with arrangement ideas and instrumental parts, while Joey spontaneous as ever, came in with concepts and an eagerness to improvise.

"Life is hard. Awesome. And scary as shit. But it can lift you up if you let it," Sam offers. "These are the things Joey and I write about now. And the title can encapsulate a lot of things. ‘Years to Burn' could mean you're cocky, you've got it made. Or, our life is ours to burn, to be inspired. Or you're burned by life, brutalized. It's an ambiguous title, because life is complicated. Let's not talk like teenagers about love, desire, pain, ‘cause we're not teenagers. And that's not a bad thing."

 

Side 1

What Heaven's Left

Midnight Sun

Father Mountain - By Iron & Wine & Calexico

Outside El Paso

Side 2

Follow the Water

The Bitter Suite (Pájaro / Evil Eye / Tennessee Train)

Years to Burn

In Your Own Time

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