Flightless Bird, American Mouth

Beam made the first demo in 2004 with his early home method, multitracking drums one drum at a time, while his family was growing, he was travelling more and they were moving from Florida to Texas. On the album, Brian Deck played drums in an untreated round room, Rob Burger added piano and accordion, Beam played acoustic guitar with an EBow and stacked his own harmonies, a habit he traces to his grandmother singing harmony in church. It closes The Shepherd's Dog, and was released as a single in December 2008. Pitchfork's Joe Tangari found it stunning and starkly emotional, and PopMatters praised its waltz time.

"It's me talking to America and describing our relationship," Beam told Song Exploder. The flightless bird is the innocent part of the country, and the American mouth has a big pill stuck in its throat. The blood of Christ mountain stream comes from hikes in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo range, a sacred thing not being treated as sacred. He wanted the jumble of images the Beats used, set the memory of youth against present frustration, and gave the narrator no resolution. We criticize the things we love most, he said.

Twilight and after

The song plays in the prom scene of Twilight (2008) and sits on its soundtrack, which entered the Billboard 200 at number one. As Beam was told, Kristen Stewart was listening to it on headphones while the scene was being blocked and suggested it, and the crew heard it so often that it became irreplaceable. An orchestral Wedding Version was made for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 in 2011, and he sang the song on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2009 and 2011.

setlist.fm logs it at 218 Iron & Wine shows, second only to Boy with a Coin. Andrew Bird has played it too, with Beam joining him on stage. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.