Innovative artist Sam Beam, known by the stage name Iron & Wine, breaks the mold once again.

Not every popular musician has a taste for Serbian poetry. Then again, Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine – he took the name from a sign at a general store he passed on the road – is anything but ordinary.

Unlike many musicians, he took a break from composing for two years during Covid. “The songwriting muse doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with chaos,” Beam observes during a phone call from Salt Lake City, where he’s on the road promoting Light Verse, his wryly titled new album. “I didn’t want to write about Covid or Trump or cultural fallout. Whenever I got a quiet moment, I ended up doing visual art, which is more about turning your mind off. I’m pretty good at hermiting.”

But he was rejuvenated when he went on tour with Andrew Bird and performed some solo acoustic concerts. Light Verse, the first Iron & Wine album in seven years, is all original work – the only exception, “Anyone’s Game,’’ an adaptation of a piece by Serbian poet Vasko Popov.

Standout tracks include a killer duet with Fiona Apple on the bittersweet ballad, “All In Good Time,” in which their voices blend in seamless counterpoint to lyrics recalling John Prine: “All in good time, our plans went to shit/I told my future by reading your lips/You wore your ring until it didn’t fit/All in good time.”

Beam counts literary influences as well as musical role models. “Growing up in South Carolina, I loved Flannery O’Connor, and in college I read short story writers like Raymond Carver and poets like Norman Dubie and Mary Oliver,” he says. “Lyric-wise, I’m either looking for a story to get lost in or start with a scrawl and see where it goes.”

Light verse, indeed. With typical inventiveness, Iron & Wine will be accompanied in performance by Manual Cinema, an experimental Chicago troupe projecting live overhead shadow puppetry. As if all that isn’t enough, the opening act, Amythyst Kiah is a rising self-styled “Southern Gothic” musician whose new single – her version of Leadbelly’s classic, “In the Pines” – is starkly effective.

“I watched Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged when I was 8 or 9 years old,’’ Kiah says. (Kurt Cobain performed the song.) “It wouldn’t be until years later, studying roots music in college, that I listened to Leadbelly’s version and everything came together.’’

IRON & WINE performs at 7:30pm. Thursday, June 27 at Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $40-$80.649-1070, goldenstatetheatre.com