In the indie-rock world, the clock ticks awful fast. You can either carry on with your established sound and watch the audience you built get bored and move on to other things, or you can try and find a new sound and risk alienating that audience anyway.

Iron & Wine, the musical outlet for the Austin-based singer/songwriter Samuel Beam, attempts a bit of both of those strategies on its newest release, Kiss Each Other Clean.

Beam’s introspective, often elusive lyrics are still in place on the new album. But they’re located in often startling new settings. Take the album-opening “Walking Far From Home”. In the song, the singer traverses a landscape both joyous and horrific, dictating a litany of his visions a la Bob Dylan in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

Yet instead of the hushed folk delivery we’ve come to expect from Beam, the song has a strange space funk feel to it, all doo-wop backing vocals and industrial percussion. It’s the perfect accompaniment for the singer’s tale of disillusion and bewilderment, and it’s also a sign that this album is not going to be business as usual for Iron & Wine.

It wouldn’t have been surprising had Beam stayed close to his folky ways for this one, considering it’s his first album on a major label (Warner Bros.) and the more lucrative choice might have been to play it safe. Instead, he challenges his audience with some unusual compositions and left-of-center production choices. Not everything works, but the hits certainly outpace the misses here, and Iron & Wine sound like a band very much in their prime.

Beam’s seems rejuvenated here, delivering the most animated singing of his career. He also sounds less isolated than usual, with backing vocals at every turn. The music as a whole is warmer, less distant. On “Half Moon”, for instance, the meditative, nature-infused lyrics are given some much-needed soul by some spry female vocalists and a George Harrison-like slide guitar part.

Iron & Wine can still turn out some quiet beauties like the melodically lush “Godless Brother in Love” But Beam’s willingness to find some inspiration in sounds of the past might be the most subversive move he could have made. The itchy funk, squawking horns, and slinky guitar on “Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me” resembles vintage Steely Dan, before the song opens up into an elongated, cathartic coda to close out the album. Meanwhile, “Me And Lazarus” is another rhythmic surprise, all rubbery bass and sneaky saxophone.

As a matter of fact, the album flounders only when Beam and Company overreach looking for novel sounds. Songs like “Monkeys Uptown” and “Rabbit Will Run” try to throw disparate elements into a musical stew much like innovators like Peter Gabriel and Tom Waits, but they just end up sounding busy. The weirdness for weirdness sake just becomes a bit tiresome.

By contrast, “Tree By The River”, an instantly ingratiating piece of shimmering pop, sounds like it could have found a nice place on a 1970s AM car radio. Tucked away in the song’s gorgeous melody is a resonant tale of a man lost in middle-aged malaise flashing back to a particularly memorable romantic rendezvous. The efficiency with which the song delivers its punch is a revelation.

This kind of thing is not what you might think of when regarding Iron & Wine. But Beam is wise enough to realize that confounding expectations is a necessary step in any worthwhile musical career. Kiss Each Other Clean doesn’t seem like an experiment to be forgotten next time around.

It sounds instead like an artist finding a fruitful new way to deliver his inspiration.

SAMPLE "KISS EACH OTHER CLEAN"

"Walking Far from Home"

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"Tree by the River"

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"Half Moon"

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