Indie-folk mainstay Iron and Wine will return to the Pabst Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 13, the venue announced today. It will be singer-songwriter Sam Beam's first appearance in Milwaukee since February 2007, when he performed a solo, acoustic show that nonetheless teased some of the fuller sounds he would explore on his band's third album, The Shepherd's Dog.
In a review, the Shepherd gushed of that show:
The real Sam Beam, apparently, is a far cry from the stoic troubadour he casts himself as on Iron and Wine records. Those albums are so quiet you could hear a pin drop in the studio, and so serious they sound like autobiographical public service announcements, but at his sold-out solo concert last week at the Pabst Theater, the singer-songwriter seemed downright carefree. More than once he even poked fun at his reputation as a musical buzzkill.“Here's a new one called ‘House By the Sea,'” Beam said, introducing one of several songs he'd never performed in public before. “I knowyawn.”
A far cry from the depressed hermit much of the crowd expected, Beam commanded the stage with the assurance of a popular senior cast in as the lead in his high school's musical; he knew the audience would love him regardless of what he did. The confidence suited him well. It's doubtful the timid romantic depicted on Iron and Wine's records could have filled this large, empty stage like the outgoing southerner who created him did.
Beam's persona wasn't the night's only surprise. On Iron and Wine's hushed albums, Beam rarely works himself up beyond a whisper, but live, he demonstrates what his voice is truly capable of. Over a slow-tempo, acoustic blues/folk shuffle that rarely changed from song to song another quality of his music he made fun ofBeam replaced his recorded sighs and mumbles with fuller, more forceful vocals, and revealed a gorgeous falsetto that his albums only hint at.
Tickets for Iron and Wine's October show are $25 and go on sale Friday, Aug. 27 at noon.
