Everything All the Time — Band of Horses
Sub Pop
2006
Rating:


Band of Horses so precisely captures the rock sound of Middle America that it's difficult to believe band founders Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke hail from Seattle and the melancholy pop band Carissas Wierd instead of being South Dakota natives. For "Everything All of the Time," the band's debut long player, is an authentic Americana record, an album of aural-Cinemascope proportions that would fit perfectly as the soundtrack to a David Gordon Green movie or serve as the appropriate music for a barn dance.

Bridwell and Brooke (who left the band in July to pursue side projects) create melodies that are as expansive as prairies and as golden as wheat.

This effect is instantly achieved with the raggedy opening strum of "The First Song" and carries through gentle album closer "St. Augustine." Band of Horses moves between folk and rock with ease. The delicate strumming on songs like "Part One," "I Go to the Barn Because I Like the" and "St. Augustine" are of a piece with label-mate Iron and Wine while on "Wicked Gil" and "Weed Party" the band lets the guitars rage and crunch.

It's "Monsters" and singles "The Great Salt Lake" and "The Funeral" that cement "Everything All the Time" as a remarkable debut. "Monsters" begins with a banjo waltz that slowly crescendos to an emotionally huge finale and Bridwell's hopeful line, "If I'm lost it's only for a little while."

"The Great Salt Lake" roars to life with unassuming guitars until they take flight with the iridescent yet jangly chorus. The sound is as grand and awe-inspiringly sprawling as the title suggests.

Give "The Funeral" five minutes and it will break your heart, stop your heart and then, finally, fill it. As the song begins, the guitar peals with reverb and Bridwell's tenor "oos." One minute and 21 seconds in, the bottom drops out and the band launches into melancholic, uplifting rock. The chorus of "At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral" isn't the stuff of emo whining but of stalwart defiance. Four-and-a-half minutes in, the song turns into frantic exuberance before opening up with transcendent power chords of catharsis.

Band of Horses is an expert in this kind of epic intimacy. "Everything All the Time" is an album full of these kinds of moments, making for an album that's beautiful all the time.

Posted Thursday, November 30, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/band.of.horses/everything.all.the.time