I’m very excited to introduce my good friend and first-time Hypeful contributor Brian Rhea to the site. Brian is an art teacher in Carrollton, TX and blogs with his friends over at Those Awake. After checking out Iron & Wine’s show in Dallas earlier this week, Brian was awesome enough to pass along his review on the show:

If you’re going to an Iron & Wine concert (or just about any hipster concert for that matter), you can bank on a couple of things:

1: Someone in the opening band will be sporting one of these.
2: There will be a pleasant abundance of wool in the audience in the form of scarfs, bags, and straight-out-of-gramma’s-closet beanies.
3: Vegas puts the odds that you’ll be standing in front of two gearheads analyzing the bands’ equipment between sets at 2:1. This is a safe bet (and remember, always double down on 11). For extra fun, take one drink every time you hear, “Dude, I don’t know what that is, but I want one!” Two more drinks when the counterpart gives an answer.

These pseudo-requirements were all present and accounted for when the folk rockers recently rolled in to Dallas, and after the show it would be safe to add:

4: Concert-goers will have a deeper appreciation for The Shepherd’s Dog and will likely listen to little else in the days and weeks to come.

It’s not that I didn’t already love TSD going in, but having fallen in love with Iron & Wine through “Our Endless Numbered Days” and then sadly missing an intimate acoustic show in Fort Worth in 2005, I have to confess that a part of me was hoping that every member of the full band had suddenly fallen ill, and only Sam and Sister Sarah would be able to perform. As Instant Karma would have it, in between songs Sam muttered something to effect of, “I picked up a bug in Seattle, but I’ll give it my best.” Well, that’s what I get.

Truly, had he never mentioned that he was feeling a touch under the weather, nobody would’ve known. Sam led the band through every track from the new album, with some reimagined versions of the older tunes peppering the setlist along the way. Regardless of release date, the ever present and perhaps most endearing characteristic of all the songs is the strength of Beam’s Southern gothic lyrics.

I was a quick wet boy
Diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
And when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map
And called for you everywhere

“Flightless Bird, American Mouth”

While the overall vibe was certainly subdued, this was not a stripped down, singer/songwriter on stage with a lonely guitar kind of show. The band was eight members strong and featured several electric guitars (including Leroy Bach, formerly of Wilco), a pedal slide and Chad Taylor (Sea & Cake) on drums who was bringing it all night long. Many of the songs bled one in to the other so that the set was actually constructed of medleys, not separate moments of, “This song’s called ‘Resurrection Fern’, it goes a little somethin’ like this.”

The medleys along with the addition of several psychedelic jams gave the performance a definite “concept album” feel. In fact, at a few different points along the way, I was waiting on the jam to lead in to a Pink Floyd cover. It wouldn’t have surprised me and it left me wondering what sort of effect these shows will have on the next round of songwriting. Should we be anticipating “Dark Side of the Shepherd’s Dog”?

Iron and Wine are across the pond in the month of January and if you’re reading this in the land of the Euro, do yourself a favor and use your highly effective public transportation that we are so jealous of and get yourself in the venue. For those of us in the land of the SUV, if they happen to announce some Spring dates…I don’t know, carpool or something.

For now, everyone can listen to a live concert provided by NPR’s All Song’s Considered.

(Photo by Christina Lam.)

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