Iron & Wine

This one's dedicated to the ladies, but you'll never confuse bearded folk bard Sam Beam (a.k.a. Iron & Wine) for, say, R. Kelly or Usher. On this lovely six-song EP, which arrives nearly a year after his terrific sophomore full-length Our Endless Numbered Days, the former Miami International University of Art and Design cinematography teacher peers into the dark corners of female identity and experience and comes away with some compelling perspectives, all delivered with the usual lyrical grace, hushed vocals, and flair for understated arrangements.

Related Content

• R. Kelly Announces Love Letter Cruise, Sailing From Miami on October 1, 2012
  December 14, 2011
• Revolution Live Comments on Crappy R. Kelly VIP Party
  October 4, 2011
• R. Kelly's Black and White VIP Party at Revolution Live October 2
  September 29, 2011
• Condoms and Other Survival Gear for R. Kelly's Black and White V.I.P. Party at Revolution
  September 20, 2011
• Iron and Wine at the Fillmore Miami Beach, November 18
  November 19, 2010

More About

• Sam Beam
• R. Kelly
• Usher (Entertainer)
• Iron & Wine
• Leadbelly

In "Jezebel" and "Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)," Beam presents magnanimous, feminist-leaning takes on two of the Bible's supposed bad girls. Amid the gently picked guitars and banjos -- and sister Sarah's heavenly harmonies -- of the former, Beam's whispery tenor displays admiration for the self-determination of the so-called wicked queen: "She was born to be the woman we could blame/Make me a beast half as brave/I'd be the same." Yet, as he observes, strong women can be simultaneously fragile, too. The "brave lady" of the loping, violin-graced "Gray Stables" is "like a teacup on the counter/frail, pleasing everyone," while the dark, Leadbelly-esque title track, driven by click-a-clack percussion, crosscuts forbidding rural imagery with a tale of an aggrieved ruler whose burdensome position knows no gender.

But for all his keen insight, Beam admits to a lover in the enchanting "My Lady's House" that the fairer sex will always remain something of a mystery: "Thank God you see me the way you do/Strange as you are to me."