Many a midnight I’ve fallen asleep with Iron & Wine on the stereo, waiting for my dreams to take me down in deep blue shades. In the shank of the night, we all need a little medicine from time to time. Sometimes music is just enough.

I first listened to The Shepherd’s Dog, Iron & Wine’s third and latest record, during the daytime, and was surprised by the change in Sam Beam’s lo-fi aesthetic. Basically a one-man band until this release, Beam left his four-track machine behind in his bedroom and expanded his music to include polyrhythmic textures, percussive flourishes, and multicultural influences. Nothing too radical here, but if you’re familiar with the hushed intimacy of his earlier work, it’s significant.

So we understand each other, I will say upfront that I believe Iron & Wine is one of the finest songwriters to grace any music genre in the last 10 years. A Southerner by birth, Beam taught film studies at a Miami college for years until he had some success with Sub Pop Records, and moved his family to Austin, Texas. With three excellent records and a few EPs trailing him, Beam has only just begun his eclectic journey.

Beam has said he found inspiration in Tom Waits’ own mid-career, musical reinvention, SwordfishTrombones, when the great man traded in his kerosene-soaked saloon ballads for those of the rusty, tin-can blues variety. Though Beam shares an auteur’s sensibility with Waits, a more revealing parallel can be made with Paul Simon, especially his lyrical verse, and embrace of African, Brazilian, and Jamaican roots music throughout his solo career, most notably on Graceland in 1986.

Simon’s self-titled debut from 1972 is barely remembered these days, but it’s an understated classic of acoustic blues and mellow grooves. He nimbly fingerpicks his way through breezy but melancholy melodies, such as “Peace Like a River” and “Papa Hobo.” Light, burnished odes sung in a creamy, tired voice.

Without Garfunkel’s soaring tenor to lull or distract, Simon’s pop classicism and wry wit shine here in minor keys. If you don’t play guitar, it makes you want to, let me say that. And the slight reggae lilt of “Mother and Child Reunion” just holds you in its sway; the squared, offbeat rhythms hum, and your hips glide beneath the Martin six-string sunburst.

Iron & Wine’s debut (and still my favorite), The Creek Drank the Cradle, released in 2002, glows in similar, subtle shades. What strikes you immediately is the whispered warmth in Beam’s voice, as if he’s reluctantly spilling family secrets. (Rumor is he mixed his vocals low, so he wouldn’t wake up his sleeping daughters—but that may just be a convenient tale.) Each song unfurls his intricate guitar figures, dropped-D tunings, and aches with exquisite sorrow. Despite the acoustic sound, this is not easy listening—his bittersweet verses demand focus. Spare and sad, this music bleeds with emotional resonance.

One of my favorite Westerns is Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and it ends with Julie Christie’s character lost in an opium reverie in some Northwest frontier town while her lover, played by Warren Beatty, is shot to death on the snowy streets. Though Leonard Cohen is used on the soundtrack (and it’s hypnotic), I imagine hearing Iron & Wine during these scenes. So many of Beam’s songs swirl like fever-dreams unraveling in memory—gentle, pulsing, and timeless. Like some ancient parable. His acoustic arpeggios would ripple and his eloquent lyrics breathe as Christie inhales the smoke and drifts off into blissful oblivion as her fallen lover blooms red on the white ground. Slow fade.

As a film teacher, Beam must appreciate the cinematic dimension of his imagery. His songs have been used on recent indie soundtracks like In Good Company and Garden State because of their poignant shorthand. Much of his material feels rooted in Appalachian soil. A splash of banjo and these plaintive stories spill their fable-like qualities about fathers, families, animals, and snakes hidden in the high grass with deliverance so close.