Recorded in August 2004 with Brian Deck at his Engine Studios in Chicago, Iron & Wine's latest release, the Woman King EP, is striking both for its broadened palette (percussion, piano, violin, even electric guitar all crop up here) and its thematic focus on female characters both archetypal and personal.

The latter is mostly coincidental, a larger batch of songs yielding recurrent imagery when pared down for this EP.

That negotiation with the sexual other might be best summed up with a line from "My Lady's House": "Thank god you see me the way you do/Strange as you are to me."