Our Endless Numbered Days

On his second album as Iron & Wine, Sam Beam’s love for Elliott Smith hides in plain sight, from the hushed vocals in “Fever Dream” to the homey warmth suffusing “Each Coming Night.” But what makes *Our Endless Numbered Days* so great is how he filters these qualities through earthy folk sounds belying his Southern heritage. Beam isn’t the first indie singer/songwriter to drop in prickly banjos (“Teeth in the Grass”), nor weepy slide guitars (“Love and Some Verses”), yet few have proven as intoxicating.

Miami’s Sam Beam makes music under the name Iron and Wine and September, 2002 saw the release of his debut album, The Creek Drank the Cradle. That record was/is hushed, literate, intimate, melodic: a quiet treasure which, with its unaffected candor and depth, found fans all over. (Entertainment Weekly: “Based in Miami, of all places, [Beam] invests these songs with hypnotic beauty and sparkling melody, making them as accessible as they are affecting.”) Our Endless Numbered Days is the second full-length album from Iron and Wine and it was recorded both at Sam’s Miami home and in Chicago’s Engine Studios with Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, etc.) On it, Sam is aided and abetted by regular touring and recording conspirators: his sister Sarah Beam, Patrick McKinney, Jeff McGriff, EJ Holowicki, and Jonathon Bradley. Listening to Our Endless Numbered Days makes plain Sam’s deft touch with words and melody; one that allows him to turn out stories about love, loss, faith, or the lack of it that are at once personal and universal, set to music that is sweetly haunting and timeless.

There's an intimacy to Sam Beam's voice that makes it shamefully easy to imagine him curled up in ...

On Our Endless Numbered Days, the follow-up to 2002's stunningly good Creek Drank the Cradle, the sound of Iron & Wine has changed but the song remains the same.