Caught Live: Iron & Wine @ The Roundhouse, London

How much do we respect the choices of the artists we purport to respect, admire and, in some cases, love? Is the music fan only dedicated to the artist as long as the musician in question behaves in a way that fits with the preconceptions of the fan? If the answer to the former is ‘not very much as it turns out’ and the latter a decisive but conditional ‘yes’ then we are fickle, fickle beasts indeed are we not?

Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine have been testing the limits of fandom for the last couple of years, not necessarily through their evolving, ever-developing recorded output which people seem to accept with open arms, but through their oft- maligned live performances. The full band UK tour of 2008 was roundly panned by fans if not the broadsheets (Beam is truly their darling) for daring to stretch away from solo, or at least minimally accompanied sets and into jazzy, even world music territory.

Now, why artists like Beam and Will Oldham choose to abandon many of the traits that initially endeared them to fans in favour of experimentation, sometimes noise and bluster, is something only the artists themselves can explain. They don’t, so many here tonight are left confused, disappointed and generally displeased.

Beam’s 6-piece group (not the same bunch as on the ’08 tour) are a spritely, well-rehearsed troupe, punctuating his elegiac folkisms with jabs of jazz and wily world rhythms while a partly disinterested, partly enthusiastic crowd look on in the packed Roundhouse. Beam apologises for his heavy cold – though this does not affect his haunting, heart-achingly plaintive vocal a jot – and mutters between songs with humour and spirit – taking requests for ‘Freebird’ and a Calexico song on the bearded chin with a genuine grin.

He’s no band leader however, and we always feel that this is a set of seven people, unbound to one another, simply playing well-written songs in a professional and cheerful fashion. New arrangements of old favourites like ‘Cinder and Smoke’ and ‘Free Until they Cut Me Down’ don’t necessarily jar too much, but it’s the material from his latest record that, somewhat inevitably, fits the set-up best. ‘Me and Lazarus’, ‘Tree by the River’ and ‘Walking Far From Home’ are stirringly tuneful, lushly arranged and relatively well received. Those waiting for ‘Such Great Heights’ go home disappointed but the tremendous encore of ‘Naked As We Came’ should have made it up to them somewhat.

So, there’s no solo acoustic section, there is a LOT of saxophone and an awful lot of leaving early and standard London talking over the quiet bits – all to be expected.

That Beam chooses to present his work in different ways is something that he should be celebrated rather than berated for, and while his development as a live performer is never going to be to everyone’s taste, the idea of dismissing an artist’s show just because it’s unexpected, surprising or different is reductive thinking indeed.