Iron And Wine - Around The Well (LP)

Iron & Wine’s Around the Well is one of those compilations that actually earns its space on the shelf. Released in May 2009 on Sub Pop, it gathers stray singles, outtakes, and covers from the first seven years of Sam Beam’s project and turns them into a slow-burning portrait of an artist figuring out how much air a whisper can move. It sits neatly between The Shepherd’s Dog and Kiss Each Other Clean, but the mood leans earlier, back toward the four-track hush that first drew so many of us in.

What gives this set weight is how it stitches together his home-recorded beginnings with the richer, band-framed palette he grew into by the late 2000s. Early cuts carry that grainy room tone, the soft rasp of fingers on strings, the sense that you’re eavesdropping on a private song before the sun comes up. Then you’ll hit something from the Shepherd’s Dog era where the percussion is a little looser, guitars have a humid sway, and he pushes beyond bare-bones folk without losing the intimacy. The arc is real, and you can hear the craft sharpening track by track.

Most fans probably came here for The Trapeze Swinger, and it delivers. Nine minutes floating on a small, patient guitar figure, Beam cataloging names, places, and tiny devotions like he’s carving them into a tree. It first surfaced on the In Good Company soundtrack and became a cult favorite, passed between friends on burned CDs and late-night playlists. Hearing it sequenced here gives the song a home, and it somehow feels even more timeless alongside the other odds and ends.

Covers help map his taste and touch. His version of The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights remains a minor miracle, the bones of a synth-pop postcard dressed down to wood and breath. It showed up on the Garden State soundtrack years before this compilation, but Around the Well makes it part of his story instead of a one-off novelty. The New Order song Love Vigilantes turns from pop march to front-porch lament, steel strings carrying the melody with a calm steadiness. Both choices underline how Beam hears melody first, vibe second, and trust that a good lyric can stand still.

As with many Iron & Wine releases, the little arrangement choices say as much as the lyrics. A brushed snare that only lands every other bar. A slide guitar that arrives once, then ghosts away. Harmonies that sit just behind him, not on top. Even when a full band joins, the recording feels lived-in, never fussy. That’s the thread from the earliest four-track material to the later studio pieces. It’s music built for close listening, but it never begs for attention.

Compilation fatigue can be real, yet this set avoids it by staying focused on songs that either told a story of their own in the wilderness, or filled in gaps left by the proper albums. You can hear why critics paid attention at the time, with outlets like Pitchfork and The A.V. Club treating it as more than fan-service. It plays like a field guide to Beam’s first chapter, showing how he moved from hushed folk miniatures to something rhythmically warmer without losing his core.

If you’re browsing a Melbourne record store and spot Around the Well vinyl, pick it up, because this one belongs on a turntable. The space of the room, the breath around the guitar, the low glow of his voice, all feel tailor-made for a quiet side A after dinner. The triple-LP edition spreads these songs out so they can breathe, and it’s the kind of set that reminds you why Iron & Wine vinyl is worth the shelf space. If you prefer to buy Iron & Wine records online, this is also a smart gateway into the catalog, especially if you’re weighing which Iron & Wine albums on vinyl to start with. Type in Around the Well vinyl and you’ll find plenty of copies floating around, from U.S. pressings to shops that ship vinyl records Australia wide.

Around the Well doesn’t try to rewrite the narrative. It just gathers the threads and lets you feel how strong they are. Sit with it, and you hear a songwriter calmly expanding his range, track by track, until the edges of folk blur into something warmer and more humane. That’s the quiet trick of this collection, and it makes returning to it feel less like a detour than a long walk back through the part of the woods where you first heard his voice.