#365songs (173 / 365)

Iron & Wine's second album Our Endless Numbered Days was a nice album but I do think Woman King, the EP that followed it, has had more staying power with me. It's largely because of the introduction of percussion like that on "Evening on the Ground," which is not exactly a "banger" but is several notches more lively than Our Endless Numbered Days led me to believe Sam Beam was capable of. Also he says "fuck" in that mannered, tender voice of his. It caught me well off guard when I first heard this song, back when I was young enough to get a thrill from some singer saying the F-word, but even now it hits pretty hard because it is so incongruous.

"Evening on the Ground" also calls back to "Jezebel," the prettiest song on Woman King and one I almost devoted this entry to, and its line "Who's seen Jezebel, she was born to be a woman we could blame / Make me a beast half as brave, I'd be the same." That song's from the perspective of someone observing and thinking about Jezebel, but "Evening on the Ground" is, presumably, meant to be sung by Lilith herself. Its repetition of "you can blame me" and "you will blame me" inverts "Jezebel"'s passive sympathy with a defiance and a spitefulness that makes that F-bomb wholly appropriate. "We were born to fuck each other," here, definitely means two things.