Iron & Wine

Third live in Italy in ten years of career for the bearded Sam Beam, better known as Iron & Wine. An unexpected, belated success story for the South Carolina singer-songwriter: having established himself as one of the leading figures of the new American folk scene with a pair of albums of aching simplicity, he then changed course, expanding the boundaries of his music by collaborating with the Calexico, and making a third album ("The Shepherd's Dog") that skilfully blended hazy love songs with psychedelic and Caribbean atmospheres. Meanwhile, word of mouth, along with the inclusion of some songs in films popular especially among younger audiences ("In Good Company", "Garden State", but above all the first episode of "Twilight"), cemented his status cult, so much so that Beam's latest studio album ("Kiss Each Other Clean", which continues along the path laid out by its predecessor, despite a slight dip in compositional inspiration) debuted straight at number two on the Billboard chart. Even so, terms like hype, teenager e cult seem to be entirely foreign to the man in question. And the live show at Bologna's Locomotiv Club seems to confirm this impression.

 

The performance by Beam and his band seems almost designed to displease every kind of audience and fan, a genuine declaration of freedom and intent. Impeccable in his jacket, ignoring the unbearable heat inside the venue (which actually drives quite a few punters to leave before the end of the show), he launches into unexpectedly hazy, psychedelic reworkings of several songs from his catalogue. Denying the crowd many of his warhorses - "Naked As We Came", "Southern Anthem", "The Trapeze Swinger", the Postal Service cover "Such Great Heights", but also the lead single from the new album, "Walking Far From Home" - Beam ventures into territory that's tougher and further removed from mainstream tastes, opening the show with "Rabbit Will Run", which, caught between echoes of Peter Gabriel (on acid) and David Byrne, introduces the audience to the kaleidoscope of sounds and instruments of every kind (sax, flutes, banjo, bongos...) that fills the venue's stage. A hard blow for anyone expecting to see just Sam Beam and his acoustic guitar up there. The set continues with a "Sunset Soon Forgotten" recast in a cheerful funky mode (another none-too-subtle jab at purists attached to his earliest work). Between an even darker, more improvised "Wolves" than the studio version, there's also room for the sun-drenched pop of "Tree By The River" (perhaps the tastiest track on the latest record), fittingly one of the few songs the whole crowd sings along to. Stevie Wonder-style funk vibes resurface in "Big Burned Hand" too, before the set returns to the thornier, sweltering territory (or maybe that was just the venue's unbreathable air) of "Arms Of A Thief", also stretched out and deconstructed compared to its recorded version, which flows into the vintage rock'n'roll of "The Devil Never Sleeps".

Sadly ignoring the debut album "The Creek Drank The Cradle" entirely, Iron & Wine draws heavily from the second record, "Our Endless Numbered Days", from which he pulls a long, brooding jazz variation on the blues of "Free Until They Cut Me Down", but he also dusts off gems like "My Lady's House" (from the EP "Woman King"), rearranged in a soul vein. The crowd, however, grows increasingly bewildered, barely able to recognise these radically overhauled and "enriched" versions of Sam Beam's songs - a sense of disorientation that in recent years only certain Bob Dylan or Eels shows have managed to produce. As the set draws to a close, Beam seems almost "obliged" to throw his fans a few bones, and alongside a fairly faithful "House By The Sea" and a "Boy With A Coin" that closes with unexpected, and not entirely convincing, pounding beat rhythms, there was of course room for "Flightless Bird, American Mouth", delivered in a surprising a cappella version by Beam alone, in an exemplary demonstration of the empathy that the American songwriter's voice alone can convey.

Sam Beam is an artist in the fullest sense, a songwriter who loves to take risks and push beyond the boundaries set by the music industry (worth remembering that "Kiss Each Other Clean" is his first album released through a major label), even at the risk of alienating a good chunk of his audience, and with the intellectual honesty not to settle into self-parody, fearlessly, and perhaps knowingly, willing to get it wrong (and what we witnessed at the Locomotiv was certainly more a gut-driven live show than a cerebral one). At least he's trying, in an attempt - which today seems almost an oxymoron - to make artistic ambition and the demands of the industry coexist.