“All dead white boys sing God is good”

#24 Our Endless Numbered Days, Iron & Wine, Sub Pop, 2004

After graduating from Duke in 2003, the summer was not kind to me. Unable to find any other job than Cato Research, I found myself as a postmodern Roy Rogers, “back in the cubicle again.” Though I could discuss Levinas’ ethics or debate the finer points of religious phenomenology, I was faced with long afternoons of data entry, phone answering, and fighting with the fax machine. Oh, and depression. But at least I had my own office, so I often took breaks (like the entire afternoon) to explore the world of music online. And that’s how I came across the beautiful, haunting, and bearded folk of Sam Beam. The same afternoon I read about Iron & Wine and heard some tracks, I took an afternoon errand break to ditch Cato and head over to CD Alley in Chapel Hill. I ended up purchasing The Creek Drank the Cradle LP and The Sea & The Rhythm EP and, from then on, I let Beam’s post-Christian, pre-modern melodies and gentle acoustic rhythms drench me practically every day.

But it wasn’t until 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days that I realized Beam was beyond the real deal – he had tapped into something utterly transcendent. Days is, over the course of 12 tracks, a homily on death. “Naked As We Came” engages the fear of widowhood (“One of us will die inside these arms/eyes wide open/naked as we came/one will spread our ashes around the yard”). “Teeth in the Grass” turns the passion of young love into a prophecy for future passing: “When all tomorrow’s are gone there will be teeth in the grass.” On “Each Coming Night,” Beam creates a whispery sing-a-long so simple in its beauty that its poetry almost passes you by: “Will you say to me when I’m gone/your face has faded but lingers on/because light strikes a deal/with each coming night.” From the muted acoustic expectancy of “On Your Wings” all the way to the unbelievably profound “Passing Afternoon,” Beam channels the muse in a manner that is stupefying with each repeated listen. His earnest, soothing voice helped both Sarah and I cope with the death of a family friend in the spring of 2004, and that’s another reason this record is momentous for me. It seems that if you let a man grow a beard, profound things are bound to happen.