Our Endless Numbered Days (LP)

On his second recording, Samuel Beam continuing a modest journey into the crevices of our own mortality, morality, desire and faith.

Samuel Beam was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. His grandmother played piano in a country church. His mother enjoyed singer-songwriters and his father listened to Motown. When Beam was 14, he got a guitar and played Joy Division songs in his bedroom. Upon realizing this might disturb sleeping family members, he started playing more quietly.

Well, times change: Beam is now married, living in Miami with a young son and daughter, and a third child on the way. But some things never do: He still writes songs in his bedroom. And they're still real quiet - most of the time.

A few years ago, some of Beam's 4-track recordings were passed around amongst friends. Sub Pop got a hold of them and decided they should be heard. The result is Iron and Wine's 2002 album The Creek Drank the Cradle. These were the crushed whispers of a blessed man with an acoustic guitar - the picture of idyllic grace and literacy. A mixture of folk elements, verse and affecting melody, Beam's music politely scratched the surface and then bore straight through the current rock canon, a dulcet offer to lead its followers to another place. And they were happy to follow. Beam found himself tossed gently into the strange world of touring (going out with bands like The Shins, The Decemberists, Fruit Bats, Ugly Casanova and Broadcast), and perhaps the much stranger world of hot-blooded fandom.

Over the course of the next two years, Beam released Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) and The Sea and the Rhythm EP (2003) - continuing a modest journey into the crevices of our own mortality, morality, desire and faith - our quiet guidebooks through those rites of passage we tenuously share.

Beam's unflinching gift lies in harborage. In many ways completely insular - existing outside of the trappings of popular music, untouched and never swayed by their expectations or trends, fancy clothes or loud noises - his questions mirror ours. And we need, for just a few minutes, to see things through his eyes. Even guys with Mohawks.