Band of Horses - Cease to Begin (Sub Pop 2007)
July 10th 2008 11:09
I have to admit I'm a late convert to this band. I have been so close to picking up one of their two albums in record stores, but put them down again because of their 70's prog looking cover art and highly dubious name.
After being drenched in their ridiculously radio friendly pop one too many times, I had to get an album and see if they're stayers or merely the sweet soundbites on so many car adverts* and film trailers.
Like their Sub Pop stablemates The Shins, their sound is straight-faced, shimmering, fearless falsetto Carl Wilson vocals - vulnerable, sweet, right-on-the-note; jangly guitars, layers of keyboard and lush production and just a blue hint of that ubiquitous alt-country sound. There's even a genuine southern twang to Ben Bridwell's vocals and the timeless Springsteenesque lyric about a screendoor slamming in Window Blues. Needless to say, I can't help myself. It's the sort of stuff that fills my eyes with tears.
No One's Gonna Love You is, musically and lyrically, so arrestingly sentimental that you feel it must be taking the piss at first. But Bridwell plays it so straight that you allow him to melt your frosty, cynical heart just a little and start imagining it soundtracking a particularly momentous occasion in your life - the likes of which don't often occur in this worker bee's life, so it just gets played on the Mac while you type out a review.
My favourite track is Ode to LRC. It's the first song of theirs that really made me take notice. There's something so summery and nostalgic about it you remember you're human. I know, I know, they do commercials. I'm still trying to get my head around that... but they've supported the utterly brilliant Iron and Wine. They can't be all bad. And musically they get to you (and probably make you buy stuff) in a way that other horrendous bunch of soul-less car advert types with an equally dire name (the New Radicals) could never hope to. That is enough for me.
They may not have the social conscience of their musical forebears (Neil Young, David Crosby and friends), but they've got the sensibilities of everyone who ever got a shiver hearing the strains of slide guitars sounding from a cabin up in the canyon where these sounds were first pioneered.
*Horror of horrors, they have pawned their stuff to flog SUVs of all things - but it's like love, you've got to know that your beloved has committed a crime before you fall. After that it's way too late... you love 'em anyway.
After being drenched in their ridiculously radio friendly pop one too many times, I had to get an album and see if they're stayers or merely the sweet soundbites on so many car adverts* and film trailers.
Like their Sub Pop stablemates The Shins, their sound is straight-faced, shimmering, fearless falsetto Carl Wilson vocals - vulnerable, sweet, right-on-the-note; jangly guitars, layers of keyboard and lush production and just a blue hint of that ubiquitous alt-country sound. There's even a genuine southern twang to Ben Bridwell's vocals and the timeless Springsteenesque lyric about a screendoor slamming in Window Blues. Needless to say, I can't help myself. It's the sort of stuff that fills my eyes with tears.
No One's Gonna Love You is, musically and lyrically, so arrestingly sentimental that you feel it must be taking the piss at first. But Bridwell plays it so straight that you allow him to melt your frosty, cynical heart just a little and start imagining it soundtracking a particularly momentous occasion in your life - the likes of which don't often occur in this worker bee's life, so it just gets played on the Mac while you type out a review.
My favourite track is Ode to LRC. It's the first song of theirs that really made me take notice. There's something so summery and nostalgic about it you remember you're human. I know, I know, they do commercials. I'm still trying to get my head around that... but they've supported the utterly brilliant Iron and Wine. They can't be all bad. And musically they get to you (and probably make you buy stuff) in a way that other horrendous bunch of soul-less car advert types with an equally dire name (the New Radicals) could never hope to. That is enough for me.
They may not have the social conscience of their musical forebears (Neil Young, David Crosby and friends), but they've got the sensibilities of everyone who ever got a shiver hearing the strains of slide guitars sounding from a cabin up in the canyon where these sounds were first pioneered.
*Horror of horrors, they have pawned their stuff to flog SUVs of all things - but it's like love, you've got to know that your beloved has committed a crime before you fall. After that it's way too late... you love 'em anyway.
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