Too much Whine, not enough Iron

We went to see Iron & Wine at the Crystal Ballroom this evening. I have all the albums Sam Beam has recorded under his Iron & Wine moniker and I enjoy them a lot. Some more than others. I've written on here how I do enjoy the new album very much... but I've never seen him live.

apparently he has a band now - and they all took part in writing and recording the new album. That's a good sign. As I said - I like the new album.
If you're wondering whatever happened to the crowds of people who used to follow the Grateful Dead around, I can now tell you. They're in the band that backs Sam Beam and together they all call themselves Iron & Wine.

It's pretty unfortunate. Sam Beam used to write/record some of the most beautiful and intimate folk/indie tunes around. Now he's got this backing band of old jazz/hippies who like to transition from one song to the next with a fucking jam session. They played for an hour and a half. Maybe 3 songs sounded like their original versions and all but two of them included a serious hippy waste of time jam session.

Disappointing for sure.