Hen’s Wife

Iron & Wine — 2026

“A warm and steady return—Hen’s Teeth proves Sam Beam’s songwriting still casts a quiet, lasting spell.”

It’s been almost a quarter-century since Sam Beam took the indie folk scene by storm with his lo-fi masterpiece of a debut, The Creek Drank The Cradle, in 2002. Since then, Iron & Wine has evolved substantially, adding new sounds and exploring more musical avenues as Beam follows his muse wherever that happens to take him. Hen’s Teeth, the 11th studio album (if you include a couple of collaborations), doesn’t stray too far from the last few records, offering up ten new tracks that feel right at home in their discography.

Iron & Wine have explored everything from mystical folk and synth-infused indie pop to jazz influences and beyond. At the center of it all is Beam’s warm tenor and finger-picked guitar, sonic anchors that unite those disparate sounds across different eras and records.

Hen’s Teeth follows the same rough formula as the last several albums, using acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, and drums as the foundation for each track, adding flourishes of keyboard, strings, mandolin, banjo, and other instruments along the way. Bluegrass/Americana group I’m With Her add backing vocals to a few of the tracks that complement Beam’s singing nicely, adding some variety with call-and-response lines on tracks like “Robin’s Egg.”

It would be surprising if indie folk fans weren’t already well-acquainted with Iron & Wine; but if that were the case, artists like Fleet Foxes, Ray LaMontagne, Fleet Foxes, and José González would be good points of comparison. On this album in particular, the addition of violin and mandolin on some tracks calls to mind Bob Dylan’s album Desire and his Rolling Thunder Revue phase (though Beam’s songs don’t quite match Dylan’s in intensity).

The album’s best moment comes around the halfway point with future Iron & Wine classic “In Your Ocean.” The song’s effortless melody and warm, upbeat production recall some of Beam’s best tracks from albums like The Shepherd’s Dog and Ghost On Ghost. Songs like “Singing Saw” and “Paper And Stone” are more somber but still retain a quiet beauty, while closer “Half Measures” feels almost like Beam interpreting a standard from the Great American Songbook, with its jazzy touches and falsetto vocal melodies.

As is typical for an Iron & Wine album, Hen’s Teeth mixes tracks that feel very personal with others that are more impressionistic. The more intimate moments often find Beam talking directly to another character off-screen or engaging in some introspection, while the more imagery-laden tracks experiment with nature metaphors and an almost southern gothic tone.

Hen’s Teeth doesn’t push the boundaries of what an Iron & Wine album can be, instead opting for familiar sounds and concerns. If you’ve liked the last few records you’ll probably like this one too. Those who enjoy the more exploratory aspects of the earlier records will likely be a bit disappointed at first, but Beam’s songwriting is still consistently strong and the tracks grow on you with repeated listens. In other words: it’s a pretty standard Iron & Wine album—but if you’re already on board, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.