Change the chief constant in Iron & Wine's music

Sam Beam has taken Iron & Wine in directions far removed from the hushed acoustic settings of his early albums.

"It's like food: Why eat only one type of food when there's so many different types to try?" Beam asks, trying to explain.

Beloved for the sparse intimacies of home-recorded The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and the slightly more fleshed-out Our Endless Numbered Days (2004), Beam expanded his palette by collaborating with Calexico for 2005's In the Reins. His subsequent work, including this year's Kiss Each Other Clean, has blended elements of '70s soft rock, African highlife, jazz funk, even a little Elton John. Beam calls it a "genre potpourri."

But Beam's clear, direct voice and parabolic lyrics have been constants.

"I just don't like the idea of putting out the same record over and over again," he says from his home in Austin, Texas. "The subject matter doesn't change a lot. I still write about life, love, death, God, sex, all that fun stuff. You try to change clothes with it, try on something new. It would be hard to get quieter, so the other direction seemed to make more sense. Of course, I could do quiet, sparse records over and over again, but it's a lot more fun to include other types of music that I like to play."

For the tour that comes to the Electric Factory Thursday, Beam will front an expansive eight-piece band that includes most of the members of Califone and, singing backup, the Swell Season's Marketa Irglova and singer-songwriter Rosie Thomas. Live, even the new songs will have new clothes.

"I don't like the idea of a song dying as soon as you record it," he says. "I like the idea of continuing the creative process out of the studio. So we change the arrangements around, push them a bit, beef up arrangements of some older songs that were a little more quiet, strip down new songs that have more robust arrangements - now they're quiet."

For this tour, "Free Until They Cut Me Down" from Endless Numbered Days has, in Beam's words, "almost a free jazz/Elvin Jones sound." Other songs sound "like the Flamingos or something, like psychedelic doo-wop." Like Bob Dylan, he's constantly reimagining his songs, and he's doing so by blending and blurring genres.

"I don't really approach it like a comedian doing impressions with different types of music. I mean, I try to use elements together that you don't usually hear together, and hopefully create something new," he says.

"At the end of day, they're just my tunes. As long as I sing them, they'll sound like an Iron & Wine thing, I guess."