Iron and Wine

After the release of Iron and Wine’s (singer/songwriter Sam Beam) 2002 stunning debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, found a receptive audience with its hushed, intimate melodies and bare approach to songwriting it’s only fitting that Iron and Wine returns with the equally beautiful Our Endless Numbered Days - an even more prolific and proper introduction into Beam’s literate and deft world.

Recorded partly in Beam’s Miami, Florida, home studio and Chicago’s Engine Studio, Our Endless Numbered Days maintains the sweetly haunting innocence that began two years ago and ups the ante with a dozen equally engrossing tracks, each one a little gem waiting to be unearthed. With this album though, Beam took the time to completely flush out his ideas and do his music justice, properly producing his songs, while recruiting friends and family to help create his simple, yet elegant sound.

With the picking of an acoustic guitar and Beam’s delicate, melancholy voice, perfectly complemented by the harmonies of his sister Sarah Beam, Iron and Wine is able to coalesce the storytelling of songwriters past (Bob Dylan, James Taylor) and present (Badly Drawn Boy), inevitably creating an atmospheric and ambient environment that is the perfect complement to late summer night campfires or relaxing candlelit baths. And although no song is radio ready (or for that matter, no one song even stands out as superior than all the rest), Our Endless Numbered Days is a refreshing change of pace from some of the pompous, self-righteous music that we are all guilty of digesting. In the new millennium, there hasn’t been an artist that has done more with less, and for that, Iron and Wine’s easy listening and stripped approach should be embraced and welcomed as a much-needed alternative to the gluttony of pop and modern rock.

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