Iron & Wine: “Rabbit Will Run”
Photo Courtesy of KUT Radio
Sam Beam says there’s a perfectly logical reason his latest record, Kiss Each Other Clean, sounds like a complete departure from the signature hushed vocal sound he established on his 2001 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle. “We try to have fun when we go into the studio,” Beam told KUT’s Jay Trachtenberg during an exclusive performance last month, “it’s fun now to embrace the differences – play it big sometimes, play it quiet sometimes, but see how far you can stretch a song, see how elastic it is.”
Beam records under the moniker Iron & Wine and he says his first recordings were done in his spare time and he did what he could with what he had. He also said the lyrical content of the early songs were appropriate to the intimate, sparse setting. They were love songs.
“Rabbit Will Run” is not a love song. Beam says it’s a loose narrative revolving around the ultimate rationalization. In this live version captured at KUT, Beam is alone in the studio, just his guitar and his voice. As a result, the song is inherently stripped down and powerfully bare.
