review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photos by Rhett Muller
Sam Beam’s favorite wordless lyric is “nah.”
If there’s a hole in a song or Beam was compelled to sing over what might have been an instrument solo on an Iron & Wine record, out came the nahs on Friday night at the Rococo Theatre. Sometimes they were short rhythm-keepers, but sometimes barely separated, the equivalent of a held note with a hint of laceration at the conception of each phrase.
In each “nah” we find the balancing act now borne out of 11 recorded years of Iron & Wine, the missing link between the ornate, electro-R&B jubilee of Ghost On Ghost and the lap steel Appalachia dirges of The Creek Drank The Cradle. In each expression of “nah” emanates a two-headed feeling both equally important to Beam: one of the horn-fed American joy of your high school basketball team dunking the opposition out of the gym, the other a mournful pessimistic call against death and night. “Nah” may be the bridge between Sam Beam the bandleader and Sam Beam the Southern troubadour.
On the Rococo stage, Beam traversed the canyon between the ironclad whisper of his first five years of solo material and the orchestral busyness of Kiss Each Other Clean and Ghost On Ghost in a dance of undressing and redressing his band, performing in layers. Beginning with 12 accompanists — three horn players, three backup vocalists, three string players, drummer, bassist, pianist — Iron & Wine live was more of an amorphous project name than ever, shrinking from ensemble to solo artist and then growing back.
As was the case with a solitary Beam, the grandest weapon of opener Jesca Hoop on Friday was the massive silence of the theater as the last seats filled. She communed with the vulcan quiet of space between the balcony and floor with thumb-heavy picking songs punctuated by her hyper enunciation. Both in and out of the songs she used her mouth like a sedated Shakespearean actor, chopping off hard consonants and rolling vowels into odd contortions of her Northern California roots and Manchester, England, adult life. Standouts “City Bird” and “Hunting My Dress” took on guitar tunings that recalled Bohemian carnivals and Asian folklore, minimal waltzes beneath a voice that showed it could be a tuneful whisper but also reach angelic heights through a tight-throated falsetto. Hoop on her albums leans toward the same error of idle hands as Beam’s and reaches a level of experimentation and filtration that even at its most complex is far less remarkable than what the artist accomplish alone in natural space.
In that same space and despite his gargantuan band, Beam was always string-pulling at the center. It was Iron & Wine not as just a mass of sound but a flourish magnetized around a focal point, which ultimately makes for a spectrum of Iron & Wine. Like 2012’s Ghost On Ghost, the sound could be grandiose and top-heavy, but it was neither overly synthesized nor thoughtless. Take Beam’s rendition of “Passing Afternoon” from Friday night. Twin clarinets began with identical, trill-colored parts, completely unrecognizable from the chording of the closer from Our Endless Numbered Days. Beam started singing in the warm, clear lilt of the record. About 30 seconds in, he struck his first guitar note as the clarinets were still repeating their downward run. And over the course of the song’s first two minutes, it gave itself over from an orchestrated, unidentifiable cover to the piano-driven, chord-and-breathe song audiences remember from 10 years ago.
After performing extensively from Ghost On Ghost and then maxing out the scope of his ensemble with “Baby Center Stage,” Beam acknowledged how voluminous a band of 13 players can be.
“That song was so big it barely fit in your ears,” he said. “Let’s do it smaller.”
The string players remained for “Monkeys Uptown,” for which Beam muted strings by wedging a handkerchief down on the bridge of his guitar, making a series of jokes about how it was a banjo and fainting mock anger at Mumford & Sons for stealing his act. From there, Beam, who was interested in conversing with the crowd from the moment he appeared under the stage lights, opened the floodgates by simply inquiring of the Rococo, “Well, what do y’all wanna hear?” By himself and just partially informed by audience requests, Beam played “Bird Stealing Bread,”“Naked As We Came,” “Sodom, South Georgia” and “The Sea and The Rhythm.”
For as charming and well-oiled as Beam’s request period was, there was a certain weatherbeaten exposure hiding just beneath the surface of the jovial man who let the audience change the tenor of the dinner theater into an unlikely rock club. It was an ostensibly generous offer, but just as someone on Friday night yelled out “Trapeze Swinger” (as someone must at every Iron & Wine show), Beam had to acknowledge the hole in the artifice that he either doesn’t want to play eight-minute rambler or that he can’t remember the words, or maybe both. The singer appeared slightly relieved to be rejoined by this violinist, violist and cellist for a sweeping version of the cover-favorite “Such Great Heights.”
The show at its most serene was Beam standing alone with the spotlight bearing down on his guitar and beard-shrouded mouth and guitar not because of some obligatory desire that he play the hits, but because of the sheer payout. As impressive as the versatility of the band was, you would expect a crew of 13 musicians to keep a few different hats in their hat box. You would expect that the horn players could pop their golden instruments and swing their hips, but also play fragily. You would expect that 13 musicians could exude myriad styles and with professional dynamics.
But somehow when Beam laced up for the lone encore, “Each Coming Night” — another existential lullaby from Our Endless Numbered Days — it was still a surprise of rich fullness of what a couple fingers and a grassy voice could unfold for an audience. If the pieces of such a song are understated, the results spread out in the Rococo until finally restrained by the angular arms of the Greek heroes and nymphs painted high up on the ceiling of the theater. And this was the only ceiling for a song so gracefully nocturnal. “Light strikes a deal with each coming night,” the singer hushed onto us, his attentive children, drawing consciousness and sleep near to each other.
“Have you ever been in front of bunch of people and not known what you’re gonna do?” Beam asked one of his self-made, cordial hecklers, who was trying to sneak in his song request. “Most people wake up.”
He quietly admits it. This is a dream.
Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s staff writer. He usually returns to this live session for his Iron & Wine fix. Reach him at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.