Archive series volume no. 5

"Beam would later work as a school teacher in the Miami public school system before Iron & Wine fully hit its stride, and these early efforts, in turn, offer an intriguing insight into his austere origins. Formative and fascinating, Tallahassee is revelatory in its own right".

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"As far as lost, pre-fame recordings go, Archive Series No.5: Tallahassee Recordings is a genuine find. It skips over the one-off shot of brilliance that is Creek and provides a template for what Iron & Wine would sound like with more filled-out backing and a jauntier, less insular feel".

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"Sam Beam's earliest recordings reveal a songwriter and singer already secure in his eccentricities. Far from sounding tentative, these songs are more like a lost Iron & Wine album".

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""Lost" debut unarthed after 20 years: The themes of love, death and faith are already present, but [Beam's] observations are more direct: "Ex-Lover Lucy Jones" unfolds slowly yet its tragic narrator gets a kicking, while "John's Glass Eye" is folk song at its most dark, heading somewhere gruesome and unexpected in under two minutes. Recorded by fellow film student and future bandmate EJ Holowicki, the songs, while still lo-fi, ring out clearer and more confidently than the bedroom recordings of Beam's debut proper: six-minute opener "Why Hate Winter", with its central image of sharing a blanket with an unrequited love while the radio plays "a song that just wouldn't fit in the summer", stands among his most georgeous and evocative work".