ive tracks, only twenty-one minutes long – more artists should take a leaf out of Iron and Wine’s book. Albums – even the greatest ones ever made – are just too long. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that any ten/twelve song release is going to contain at least one filler track - or even just a boring passage that I’ll want to skip. Some albums can seem intimidating to approach - even if they are stuffed full of quality music - because it feels like a chore sifting the good from the bad.

The best approach for an artist is to release their material in more digestible, bite-size chunks. Songwriters seem to lose the desire to include pointless “curio” tracks when they’re releasing a mini-album or an EP – possibly because it does more damage to the good/not-so-good ratio than on a longer album. Sugar and Beachwood Sparks reached new creative peaks with mini-albums (Beaster and Make the Robot Cowboys Cry respectively) – now Florida’s Iron and Wine (aka Samuel Beam) has delivered his own fat-free gem.

This record’s closest recent contemporary is Bonnie Prince Billy’s Master and Everyone LP. Both are steadfastly lo-fi – acoustic guitar, whispered vocals, no smoothing down of rough edges. There is some slide guitar and banjo chucked in for good measure too, but the arrangements are similarly simple and uncluttered – with no evidence of any ‘production’ to speak of.

Rough bedroom recordings like this can be an endurance test. It’s not uncommon to crave some crisp beats and hooks and shiny production after a small-but-unwelcome dose of “raw and authentic” singer-songwriter mulch. It takes something special to grab attention when making music in that sort of gimmick-free environment, but The Sea and the Rhythm certainly succeeds in winning you over. Five gorgeous melodies, beautifully sung – it’s a simple but winning formula.

Beam’s voice is delicious – a Drake-esque melancholy whisper that wraps itself nicely around his hushed, gentle songs. Every track here is strong, but the opening duo (“Beneath the Balcony” and the title track respectively) stand out marginally from the rest. Bleakly beautiful and dripping with sadness, they also exhibit Beam’s flair for a powerful, mysterious lyric (Beneath the Balcony includes the haunting line “And how she prays to find a man to blame / …for every gun she frowned upon / but still some fucker made.”)

Any album as precious-sounding as The Sea and the Rhythm is going to be a mood-reliant listen. It charms at low rather than high volume; it’s so shy and delicate that it feels cruel to air it in a room full of people. But as a soundtrack to a solitary, hungover Sunday morning, this is peerless stuff.