A Man for all Seasons

Iron and Wine (aka Sam Beam) came into my life a few months before graduating high school, and he's been an absolute fixture ever since. I, like all of his followers, fell in love with the ghostly quality in his voice and the organic, homespun feel to his songs. But his sound initially was very much a niche sound. He was one of those 'sleep' artists, and, judging from his first two albums, would never make any sort of energetic, dace-able music. But that's just what he did. Like all artists of significant talent, Beam began taking serious musical risks, and proved that the only thing defining his sound is the mood he's in when he's creating it. In truth, listening to his newer stuff kind of makes the early work sound... well, look at it this way: if the older songs are mashed potatoes, then the newer songs are the whole Thanksgiving feast.

The Iron and Wine live experience is always fascinating. Like Dylan before him, Beam performs plastic surgery on a lot of his old songs. The soul, the body is still the same, but in some cases the face may be completely different. The two videos below display what I'm trying to get at here. Which Iron and Wine is your favorite? Actually that's an unfair question. Neither face is better... only different.

* - check out the percussionist 1:00 in. I feel like he's the adult incarnation of many dudes I went to college with. Lastly, this song gets blissfully awesome at roughly 4:30.