The Shepherd’s Dog

In a number of interviews Sam Beam (who releases music under the moniker Iron & Wine) has touched on some of the political themes present in The Shepherd’s Dog. He summarizes them well retrospectively in an interview with Mike Hilleary of Interview Magazine from 2013, six years after the record was released:

I remember The Shepherd’s Dog record being not necessarily a political record, but a reaction to socio-political situations in America. And it didn’t manifest itself as protest or propaganda songs, but there’s a lot of surreal imagery that was born out of really me being surprised Bush got re-elected in ’04. And it was less about Bush as it was about me realizing I didn’t understand the culture I was in or that I didn’t relate to the culture. In that sense it’s a surreal rite of passage where things aren’t necessarily how you would like them to be, but you have to come to terms with it in one way or another. It was more of portrait of a maladjusted version of America, feeling helpless to a certain extent, feeling angry, but also in love with the surroundings at the same time. The normal human complexities.

This complicated relationship Beam describes with America and society in general is reflected throughout his work in his lyricism, the analogies he builds in songs like “House by the Sea”, “White Tooth Man”, and “Carousel” draw a dark and mistrustful picture of a world he only just realized he didn’t fully recognize.