IRON & WINE
Wednesday: If you expect next week's Iron & Wine concert to be an intimate, soft, solitary-folkie sort of affair, as it was with early albums, then you clearly haven't been keeping up. Austin, Texas-based song man Sam Beam is now touring with a 12-member ensemble in keeping with the lushly orchestrated and sometimes surprisingly funky sound of his recent albums for Nonesuch Records. His latest one, "Ghost on Ghost," echoes Van Morrison's most ambitious stuff and even has a Christopher Cross-like soft-rock sheen to it. Beam might be losing some of his hipness factor, but he's really finding a groove. Brooklyn boy/girl duo Widowspeak opens. (8 p.m. Wed. Sold out. First Avenue, 701 1st Av. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388, http://first-avenue.com.)
