Review | Band of Horses and Iron & Wine Team Up for a Reflective Evening of Song in Santa Barbara

“Say it’s here where our pieces fall in place,” Sam Beam gently sings on Iron & Wine’s lush and lovely single from 2019’s Beast Epic, “Call it Dreaming.” This first line also perfectly explains that “just right” feeling that washed over me while sitting at the Arlington Theatre and soaking up the wonder of the Band of Horses and Iron & Wine show on Friday. 

Ben Bridwell, the frontman of Band of Horses, and Sam Beam of Iron & Wine have created two albums of covers together: 2015’s Sing into My Mouth and this year’s Making Good Time. The two both grew up in South Carolina and have been friends since before their careers took off. Their easy chemistry and Southern charm is rooted in a genuine respect and admiration of each other’s music and of each other. When Bridwell first joined Beam out on the stage for their delicious stew of collaborative and individual sets, Beam had to gush, “I just love this guy so much. That’s what we’re doing here tonight.” It was a simple agenda, and one that the audience composed of friends, family, and fans of all ages cutting loose after a long week could easily get behind. 

Iron & Wine kicked off the evening with a stunning set of the endearing tunes they’ve been creating since ushering in a now-often-emulated acoustic folk sound in 2002. Beam could have gone the entirely stripped down route, and I’m so glad he didn’t. His excellent full band fortified every song with sweeping and immersive guitar, stand up and electric bass, keyboards, fiddle, drums, and percussion. Highlights included the surging and somehow altogether un-corny “Wonderful Life,” which bounced along with an engrossing kinetic energy. The lovely “Autumn Town Leaves,” illuminated the naturally more inward-leaning fall season with reflective lyrics like “Songbirds only end up where they’re going.” 

When Band of Horses’s Bridwell joined Beam on the stage, I felt transported to a starry night in the South, especially during their cover of Spiritualized’s “Straight and Narrow.” Backed by the rousing fiddle, Bridwell’s slight drawl melded gorgeously with Beam’s vocals in earnest harmony on lines like, “The trouble with the straight and the narrow / Is it’s so thin, I keep sliding off to the side / And the Devil makes good use of these hands of mine.”

When Band of Horses took the stage, they wasted no time throttling everyone back to their early 2000’s glory. Their indomitable energy coupled with blazing lights and a serious sense of joy upped the energy and the volume of the night. They made sure to play the hits including the rocking-through-an-open-wound-like “Is There a Ghost,” and the straight to the heart single, “No One’s Gonna Love You.” Beam bopped onto the stage to intermix with Band of Horses as well, giving the show a vibe that felt at once free-wheeling yet cohesive. The duo’s cover of Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is,” had the whole house swaying and singing along. 

One of my favorite moments of the night of October 3 occurred in the beginning, with Iron & Wine’s hypnotizing “Tears that Don’t Matter.” The track is strange and beautiful, building with an eerie yet tender urgency in its meditations on the little things we fixate on and their smallness in life’s larger scope. It’s a track that begs the question: What really does matter? Looking around at the crowd nestled next to loved ones, faces aglow in deep appreciation of the music in front of them, performed with genuine care, I had to think to myself, it’s moments like these that do.