Iron and Wine / Passing Afternoon - SP664

“Passing Afternoon” from Our Endless Numbered Days.
“Communion Cups and Someone’s Coat” is a new one and was recorded in August of 2004. This track should keep you satisfied until the new Iron and Wine EP Woman King comes out February 22, 2005. “Dearest Forsaken” previously available only on the Iron and Wine Sub Pop Singles Club 7 inch; here recorded live at KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic in Los Angeles.

Track Listing:

1. Passing Afternoon
2. Communion Cups and Someone’s Coat
3. Dearest Forsaken.

Released: October 19, 2004

Iron and Wine / Woman King - SP665

Aside from the immediacy and intimacy of his recorded work, there is one thing (aside from the evidently ceaselessly noteworthy fact that he sports a beard…) clear about Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam: he is wonderfully prolific. In just short of 2 1/2 years he has released 2 albums (2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle and 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days) and (with this and 2003’s The Sea and the Rhythm) two EPs. Recorded in August 2004 with Brian Deck at his Engine Studios, Iron & Wine’s latest release is striking both for its broadened palette (percussion, piano, violin, electric guitar) and its thematic focus on female characters both archetypal and personal. The latter is mostly coincidental, a larger batch of songs yielding recurrent imagery when pared down for this EP. The increasingly complex beauty of Iron & Wine’s albums might best be summed up by the following, from SPIN (in a review of Our Endless Numbered Days):“…Beam is a fearlessly accessible songwriter, framing his melancholy in concrete imagery and solid, inviting melodies. He writes with the self-confidence of a man at peace with his gauzy gifts. He sings like a father talking to a child he respects or like a husband to a wife he adores. Beam has given us his second straight masterwork: self-assured, spellbinding and richly, refreshingly adult.” Here’s the third.

SP665
Release date: February 22, 2005

Released: February 22, 2005

Iron and Wine / I-Tunes Exclusive (4 Trks) - sp-0657

Iron and Wine / I-Tunes Exclusive - sp-0711

Itunes exclusive digital EP

Iron and Wine / The Sea And The Rhythm - SP619

5 songs recorded in Sam Beam’s bedroom from the same sessions that gave us 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle. The Sea and the Rhythm includes “Jesus the Mexican Boy,” which has been a big audience favorite at recent Iron and Wine shows. Sam and his co-conspirators will be recording the new Iron and Wine full-length this summer at Chicago’s Engine Studios with Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Holopaw, Red Red Meat), scheduled for release in early 2004.

Released: September 9, 2003