Rock and Pop: Review - Iron and Wine @ Roundhouse
Published: 17 March 2011
by CATHERINE ETOE
WE'RE going to get through this together,” Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam declared moments into his set. What we were to “get through” was not the shock of seeing Beam dressed like a priest who’d escaped a seminary in the suit he’d joined up in, but the singer-songwriter’s stinking cold.
It was a reasonable worry for a man who has made his name by writing songs with a lyrical intensity of Miltonian proportions. What were we to do if we couldn’t actually hear his tales of virgins, foxes, temples, hungry brothers and angels – make do with the wonderful tunes?
We had no need to worry; for all his suffering Beam managed to do more than justice to his new Kiss Each Other Clean.
He didn’t baulk at the vocally testing, hypnotic and hymn-like Biting Your Tail and even pulled off the glorious Walking Far From Home, a simple but ecstatic mantra.
In between it all, Beam indulged us with some devilishly chatty banter when he probably should have been gargling on TCP. If that’s Beam when he’s ill, I can’t wait to see him again when he’s better.