"Beam’s writing never gives in to a jaded or purely ironic tone—and in 2007, that’s no small accomplishment...What Iron and Wine’s music seems to be urging toward more than anything is innocence, and the touchstones in this quest are frequently religious in nature...the heartfelt prayer of Our Endless Numbered Days’ “On Your Wings”: “God give us love in the time that we have / God, there are guns growing out of our bones / God, every road takes us farther from home.”

"But while it may puzzle some that a self-confessed agnostic like Beam would find consistent inspiration in biblical images and characters that are as likely to converse with the Holy Spirit as they are to address a love interest, for Beam it’s a natural, essential part of his writing process. “I like to use [religious images] because it starts you off a little bit further along in the story. You know, you could say Bob and Jerry did this, but then you have to explain who they are. But if you say ‘Cain and Abel’ it carries a certain weight. They have a connotation everyone understands, they symbolize the duality in us all. ... I like using those, because it’s our mythology.”

"...With a second round of mojitos on deck and a crackling, dry August heat making its presence felt on Guero’s outside porch, Beam pursues this line of thought further. It turns out that religion is not merely a cultural shorthand or creative prop for Beam but, like Johnny Cash before him, it constitutes one of the only three topics he’s genuinely interested in as a writer. “You have your three big things that you can talk about, basically, if you’re going to write something that actually means something to you as a human being, which is Love, God and Death. That’s basically the thing. Love, which occupies a lot of our time, because we don’t like being lonely. God, because everyone wants to know that there’s a reason behind what they’re doing and what the hell is going on. And death is just the reality of your finite time here.” "

--From the Paste Magazine interview with Sam Beam, otherwise known as "Iron and Wine," the most whole and full music I've heard in a while. Thanks to Kat for Paste, Mike for introducing me to Iron and Wine, and much jealousy to Becca who saw Iron and Wine in concert, in a tiny venue, before they were big, because her brother was opening the show...