Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
(Sub Pop)
I can't imagine how much pressure people like Sam Beam must feel to repeat the success of a debut as stunning and critically acclaimed as 2002's The Creek Drank the Cradle. Beam seemed to have come from nowhere (Miami, to be precise) to offer up some of the most humble, sincere, and beautifully crafted songs we'd heard in years, recorded completely alone in the privacy of his home. Much like Devendra Banhart's first album, though far more conventionally beautiful, it seemed almost like an accident that we were hearing his music at all. The widespread success of Beam's first album only begs the question, "Will the next album be this good?" To further the comparison with Banhart, each artist then released EPs culled from the same batch of songs their first albums were taken from before going to professional studios to record their follow-up albums. In the end Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands seems to have fared much better than Our Endless Numbered Days.
Whenever a so-called "lo-fi" artist records in a studio for the first time there is always a concern that the music will suffer at the hands of technology. While I won't bore you with a diatribe on the dangers of professional recording (especially since I believe it can almost always improve a musician's work), suffice it to say that Our Endless Numbered Days sounds incredibly clean to the point of sterilization. More than anything, the needless use of percussion and the completely dull and unmemorable production leaves me wondering why anyone thought Sam Beam needed to record in a studio. All the intimacy from his music is gone and rather than using the studio to evolve Beam tried to do exactly the same thing he's always done, so of course it's not going to measure up since his first record was so perfectly suited to the way it was recorded. There's no way a drastic change in production aesthetic could do anything but harm the songs. However, the crystalline sound quality is only part of the problem.
Without the need to elaborate any further I can confidently say that the majority of Our Endless Numbered Days is completely unmemorable. While there are standout tracks like "Naked as We Came," the majority of the album reminds me more of the cast offs from its predecessor than the finest moments of his debut. The lyrics seem more detached than touching and the musicianship too flawless to mirror Beam's lyrics about life's tiny challenges and disappointments. Almost two albums worth of unreleased material from the same recording sessions as The Creek Drank the Cradle have been readily available for download on file sharing networks since Beam's initial rise to popularity and after listening to them it becomes painfully clear why Sub Pop chose the songs they did for the first album. Most of the unreleased songs are, like Our Endless Numbered Days, dull and forgettable, which leaves me wondering whether or not Sam Beam is really as talented as songs like "Promising Light" and "Upward Over the Mountain" lead us to believe. Having heard all the average unreleased early tracks, am I to believe that The Creek Drank the Cradle was merely an anomaly? A fluke? Do the songs on that album represent Sam Beam's natural genius or his occasional stumbling into greatness? Having heard Our Endless Numbered Days I'm inclined to believe the latter but am hopeful that in the future he'll prove me wrong.
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