South Carolina by way of Seattle’s Band of Horses, god bless ‘em, have this uncanny knack for making me want to raise my hands in the air like I actually care. The Buddhists have a saying: “Live every minute like your hair’s on fire.” That’s the way Band of Horses, at least on their 2006 debut Everything All the Time, make me feel. The indie folk rock tunes on their first LP may start out quiet but have the thrilling habit of blowing up in media res into arena-volume anthems of sublime beauty. I prefer them in arena mode myself, but the ones that don’t detonate are lovely too, and you certainly get your share of both on Everything All the Time.
A bit of background. Lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ben Bridwell is a graduate of the Perry Farrell School of Rock Singers. His high, thin telegraph wire of a voice tends to give the band’s every song a subtle tinge of prog rock as well as a tender touch of delicacy, regardless of what rough beast slouches underneath. You will either love his voice or hate it. I like it, but I would never turn my back on it.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so given how big the band’s sound can get, Bridwell said of Everything All the Time, “I thought before recording that I really wanted an ELO-sounding record, with strings and keyboards and synths, but then, as we got closer to it, we wanted to take a more raw approach.” I should add that there is absolutely nothing raw about Everything All the Time. But good thing they didn’t take the ELO approach, because it has spelled the ruination of many a good young band, and speaking just for myself, the only thing I’ve ever liked about Jeff Lynne and Company is the Randy Newman song parodying them.
Band of Horses do lots of things very well, but they’re at their best when they go from acoustic modesty to full-blown sonic grandiosity, generally without skipping a beat. They do this particularly well on “The Funeral,” which opens in quiet acoustic mode only to blow up like the Hindenburg. “Oh, the humanity!” you’ll cry as both Bridwell and Mat Brooke kick out the jams on guitar, while Brooke contributes on e-bow. I can’t say I understand the damn song, but I like the chorus, which goes, “At every occasion I’ll be ready for the funeral/At every occasion, once more, it’s called the funeral/At every occasion, oh, I’m ready for the funeral/At every occasion, oh, one billion day funeral.” The same dynamic goes for “Monsters,” which opens on a slow note with some acoustic guitar and plucky banjo by Brooke, only to slowly open up like a delicate flower. And from there the song climbs and climbs, cymbals clashing and banjo in flames, towards the peaks of ecstasy, with Bridwell repeating, “If I am lost/It is only for a little while.” Lovely tune.
The same goes for the wonderfully titled “I Go to the Barn Because I Like The,” a sweet and comely slow burner that opens with Bridwell singing the immortal words, “I like to think I’m the mess/You’d wear with pride” before morphing into a beautiful march of sorts, with both Bridwell and Brooke on vocals and Bridwell playing a nice pedal steel. “Outside by your doorstep,” sing Bridwell and Brooke, “In a worn out suit and tie/I’ll wait for you to come down,” and those words never fail to move me. This song is delicate, like an old flower pedal kept between the pages of a book of Victorian poetry, and is followed by “St. Augustine,” a toilet-paper soft acoustic number that is undeniably lovely but doesn’t float my boat, probably because it never gets around to exploding in its brief travel through this life. The same caveat goes for the incontrovertibly delicate acoustic love song, “Part One.”
Opener “The First Song” is loud and lovely, a slow and pounding rocker with a delicate side, the latter gratis Bridwell’s vocals. This one exemplifies what they do best, namely mingle the hard and soft, muffling the more burly passages in their songs so that they both burns barns and sooth your sorry soul. “Wicked Gil” plays to their rougher, faster side, and comes complete with a crashing instrumental ending that makes me almost as happy as the great “Weed Party,” a pure slice of happy that opens with a “Yeehah!” and jingles and jangles its way at a rapid pace by your ears, with both guitarists going at it and Bridwell singing mysteriously, “Parents aren’t enforcing the law.” If this one doesn’t make you want to smoke a bowl and do a joyous dance you have a wooden leg, or perhaps a wooden brain, and I love it despite the fact that its lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with smoking weed or partying in general, which leads me to paraphrase what Wooderson says in Dazed and Confused, to wit, “It’d be a lot cooler if it did.”
“Our Swords” opens with a throbbing bass and Bridwell singing, before the band comes shuffling in, and as its tempo increases I inexplicably grow less interested. Don’t ask me why. I’m an enigma. As for the excellent “The Great Salt Lake,” it’s a nice piece of trivia to know the song isn’t about the Great Salt Lake at all, but instead one Lake Murray in South Carolina, which Bridwell now comes home. The song has a can’t lose melody, and shifts tempos frequently, but what I like about it is that it’s built on a grandiose scale from beginning to end. Bridwell’s vocals are perfect, and that climb that commences as the song nears its end is euphoric, pure and simple.
Band of Horses have increased their instrumental palate over the intervening years, and while 2010’s Infinite Arms won them critical kudos (including a Grammy Award nomination) I still prefer Everything All the Time. I hear nothing that matches the sheer joy of being alive that characterizes “Weed Party,” or the ecstatic lift of “Monsters.” Bridwell’s voice is no longer the high-flying bird of yore, and while they still rock out (check out “NW Apt.” on Infinite Arms) their fast ones no longer make me feel like my hair’s on fire. And I’m not thrilled by the occasional orchestration (i.e., “Factory” from Infinite Arms) either. Or the horrifying CSNY feel of the stacked vocals on songs like Infinite Arms’ “Bluebeard.” In fact, the song makes me want to run screaming. In short, I hear them going the way of Mercury Rev, another band that has excited me less with each new, more ornately arranged LP. Perhaps they’ve finally given in to the ELO approach. If so, all I can say is, “Damn you, Jeff Lynne, damn you to hell!”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
