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."