Iron & Wine Expands Hen’s Teeth with Six Recordings on Deluxe Release

Iron & Wine’s Hen’s Teeth (Deluxe Edition) became available digitally on September 22, adding six recordings to the album released in February. Four are previously unreleased songs and two are acoustic versions of tracks listeners already know. The expanded edition has 16 tracks in total.

The new songs are Three Strangers, California Sober, Pilgrim’s Highway and Say What. The acoustic performances revisit In Your Ocean and Grace Notes. That distinction is useful for anyone deciding whether to return to the album: the edition offers both material from the original recording sessions and alternative arrangements, rather than an entirely new full-length record.

The four unreleased songs were recorded during the Los Angeles sessions that produced Hen’s Teeth and its companion Light Verse. The label describes California Sober as the last song written and recorded in that period. Placing those songs at the end of the deluxe sequence lets listeners hear how the larger pool of recordings relates to the ten-track February album, although their order on this edition is an editorial presentation rather than evidence of the order in which they were written.

Sam Beam’s project will also begin a North American headline tour on October 8 in Denver, with a scheduled October 29 conclusion in Columbia, South Carolina. The live dates give the expanded release a second context, but the new digital tracks and acoustic versions are the news for listeners who cannot attend a show.

The original Hen’s Teeth included two duets with I’m With Her. Those tracks remain part of the deluxe sequence; the six additions extend it rather than replace the earlier collaborations. Listeners looking for new compositions should start with tracks 13 through 16, while the acoustic alternatives occupy tracks 11 and 12.