Artist:
IRON & WINE
Label:
SUB POP RECORDS
Video:
“NAKED AS WE CAME”
Director:
Sam Beam
Add Date:
May 5, 2004

Hello, my esteemed video programmers! This is Andy Gesner and the staff from HIP Video Promo writing with more exciting news. We are thrilled to send you the newest video – and first from the highly anticipated sophomore release Our Endless Numbered Days – from Iron & Wine.

In 2002, this Sub Pop recording artist created gentle but unmistakable tremors through indiepop nation with The Creek That Drank The Cradle. Sam Beam’s quiet, emotional, and inspired fusion of skewed pop, alt-country, lo-fi, and traditional singer-songwriter music drew plaudits from critics and cheers from audiences nationwide. Now, Iron & Wine returns with Our Endless Numbered Days, an album that is at once clearer, more ambitious, more accomplished, and more intoxicating. This disc further travels deeper into a hallucinatory Florida swampland where love, mortality, and natural beauty coexist in a tenuous balance.

A professor of cinematography, Sam Beam knows a thing or two about making film clips. The video for “Naked As We Came” intensifies and refines the song it accompanies. Once again, Iron & Wine presents a video that is one uninterrupted shot. A camera pans rightward along a banquet table, revealing two dead goldfish, and food that has been left out too long: insects have been at the bounty. At the end of the table stand a young boy and girl – he kisses her, and they run off through a sudden sunshower. From here, the camera pans leftward, back across the table. As the rain pours down, we discover that the food has been eaten. Finally, the camera reaches its starting-point, and the goldfish, once floating at the top of their bowl, are now alive and healthy. Here, Beam shows us the interplay between decay and sumptuousness, youth and mortality, and the chill of fate amid summer’s plenty.

The elliptical quality of the clip perfectly mirrors the pace of the track. Each pass along the length of the table lasts as long as the single verse it accompanies. The single shot represents both the linear quality of the song and the trajectory of life.

Beam is a songwriter with much to communicate. His natural rhythm and poetic, dreamlike reflections may suggest the Deep South, but his viewpoint is instantly identifiable and sympathetic – one we all can share.  An artist at the top of his game, he presents his visual and musical ideas as part of a seamless, uncompromising, and fascinating vision. You can imagine how truly blessed we feel here at HIP Video Promo to be able to send you this remarkable clip. Many thanks to Megan Jasper and Lacey Swain at Sub Pop for allowing us to be a part of Iron & Wine’s special journey.  If you need more info or would like to see or interview Iron & Wine while they are on tour, call me at 732-613-1779, or email info@HIPVideoPromo.com  to find out more about this visceral, engaging artist.

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For info on Iron & Wine’s previous video “Southern Anthem” click HERE