If this week’s leak is any indication, Sam Beam’s hi-fi awakening in 2005 won’t be crawling back into bed anytime soon. The man’s third long-player as Iron & Wine, The Shepherd’s King, will certainly surprise passive Garden State fans with its robust, full-band approach, but even those who’ve followed the “band” through two oustanding ’05 EPs will get their fair share of surprise.

Much like Devendra Banhart, the other high-profile indie-folk artist that shares Shepherd’s September 25 release date, Beam sips from the ‘70s classic-psych well with this one, made most evident on the bongos, claps, organs and wah-heavy guitars of “Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog).” About three minutes into expectedly ethereal territory (“Wolves in the middle of town and the chapel bell ringing through the windblown trees / bay to the butcher’s boy with the parking lot music, everybody believes”), a two-minute, fireside acoustic/electric guitar combo jam kicks off, complete with an Indian rattle to act as the hippie “start your engines” gun.

And in what may be the closest Beam ever gets to Black Sabbath, Iron & Wine does its best impersonation of “Planet Caravan” on their own “Carousel,” a subdued guitar-and-vibraphone song with a heavy dependence on vocal flanging (though the female harmony vocals that poke in at song’s end aren’t all too Ozzy-ian). But fear not, 12-year-old girls, as album closer “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” has enough sap on the surface (“When the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair / Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere”) and acoustic, major-key wistfulness to obscure its heavy-handed look at American culture (“Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain stream”). Something for everybody!

Ultimately, on first impression, the album is both rousing and comforting, as no backing band can change the fact that Beam remains the world’s best lullaby singer, Ozzy impression aside.