Iron & Wine - Hen's Teeth - Indie Edit

Hen’s Teeth and his previous album, Light Verse, are siblings of a sort. They were recorded during the same sessions after a year-long dry spell, with the same band, at Waystation studio in Laurel Canyon. “When I’ve been on a writing kick, and the band can meet me where I’m at, they push me into something I hadn’t imagined. I’m at a point in my life where spontaneity is a lot more important to me. I don’t have as much to prove as I used to. I’m a lot freer and I love making music more than ever. There are no right or wrong answers. You just pray for your luck and try your best.”

In this case prayers were answered and luck struck hard. The musicians cohered so quickly and inspired each other so much that they were often getting songs recorded in just a few takes, sometimes at the rate of two or three per day. The two albums might therefore be thought of as fraternal twins: they share DNA and complement each other but have distinct identities and are defined as much by their differences as their similarities.

Light Verse (2024) took its name from a form of poetry that makes heavy use of wordplay, humor, and nonsense. Its cover depicts figures in silhouette, floating or falling through a cyanotype sky. It’s a sweet and airy album, impressionistic, at times even flirting with abstraction, a hearty shaking off of the doom and gloom of the Covid era. Many of the songs are named for ideas or feelings that gesture toward hope amidst uncertainty: “You Never Know,” “All in Good Time” (a gorgeous duet with Fiona Apple), “Cutting It Close,” “Taken by Surprise.”
 
Released 27th February 2026