Blog.WBRU

When Iron & Wine took the Lupos stage on Sunday night, Providence got the chance to forget about the chilled weather outside and spent an hour and a half getting downright cozy. The set started out with several older tunes, with only Sam and Sarah Beam on the stage. Their voices were hushed and sweet, and quiet enough that crowd chatter probably could have drowned them out, but the concertgoers just soaked up the show. In a funny way, being polite enough for everyone to hear the band made the hall full of strangers feel like a group of friends. A little later on though, the Beams were joined by the rest of the band and jumped into mostly new material off of The Shepherd’s Dog—and if it wasn’t new material, it was stylized like the newer stuff.

In retrospect, I didn’t know what I was in for from the Iron & Wine live show. Instead of trying to make his hushed whisper work on the road, Beam worked the road into his music. Resting in the slick, bluesy grooves of his tight rhythm section, it was a lot more like Beam set out to turn Lupo’s into the coziest tavern-rock show ever. It worked.

Read more to see photos from the show.

Photos by Travis