Sunday awesome omnivore Sam Beam Iron & Wine! No time to delay, watch this video, right now, twelve times, and probably cry.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. Your awesome Sunday omnivore for today is Sam Beam, who basically comprises Iron & Wine. He writes tremendous modern folk music, with wonderfully (sometimes obscure) lyrics, and just…he’s good. He’s very, very good. That song above was “Flightless Bird, American Mouth.” It’s the last track off the most recent studio album, The Shepherd’s Dog.

As Iron & Wine has progressed, the arrangements have gotten more dense with more instruments - that’s certainly not a bad thing. On the album, that last song had a lot more going on in it. But originally, it was just Beam and a guitar. Usually double-tracked vocals. Like this one, “Lion’s Mane,” off The Creek Drank the Cradle. This was directed by Beam himself. I recall reading he used to teach cinematography or something of that nature.

Another one Beam directed himself is “Naked As We Came,” from Our Endless Numbered Days. Genius in its sparseness. I think it’s worth watching the whole thing.

Here’s another beautiful one, with a homemade video, called “Passing Afternoon.” It’s off Our Endless Numbered Days. YouTube tells me it was on House. So there’s that. It also happens to be one of my favorites from Iron & Wine.

I could go on forever just posting this beautiful music on this rainy Sunday afternoon, but I think that maybe I should stop now - even though I haven’t gotten into the album Iron & Wine did with Calexico, which is awesome, or any of the EPs, or even the live album released yesterday, which prompted this post. But if you want heartfelt, beautiful, timeless  music, you might like to get some Iron & Wine. I think also the Garden State soundtrack? He folked out a Postal Service song? YouTube, help me out here. Yup.

Compare it to the original:

A little different, no? For the record, I like them both very much. We’re not playing favorites here. Okay, we’ve gone on much to long now. Maybe you should just scan up to the top of this post and watch that first one again, and ensure you have a great day. takepart with the vegetarian blah blah blah.