Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

Band of Horses
Everything All the Time
Sub Pop, 2006

seriousness: 8/10

fun: 5/10

sincerity: 9/10

It's hard to review an album like this, you know the kind that gets spectacular reviews from those websites that I visit everyday: pitchfork, cmj, nme, blah blah blah. But I really wanted to give the album a listen, and since I have a degree that says I'm a writer, I decided to go ahead and write about it. The one thing that made me want to give this album a spin is Band of Horses' most commonly cited influence: My Morning Jacket. Those guys always get me right in the gut, and the voice of Jim James is the voice of my grandpa, askin me to come closer to his grave. I can feel the death on his tongue rattling between his teeth. My Morning Jacket is possibly just as sad and gorgeous as real life tragedy.

But before I had a chance to listen to Everything All the Time, I saw the video for 'The Funeral,' an incredible cathartic dirge whose video brought back my childhood. the summer after my parents divorced, my father liked to take his fourteen year old boy into town to the bars, because well, I was too young to stay at home alone, and the bar had soda, candy bars, a jukebox, and a pool table. We'd drive from bar to bar, for hours and hours, roaming the streets of Beverly, Ohio. Dad would occasionaly drive right through a red light. I was a paranoid kid, and I thought for sure we'd get pulled over and tossed into jail. and why not? My dad probably deserved it, I thought, he was stinking drunk, with his boy in tow; he was self destructive; soaring from manic laughter to a depressed stare and eventually to a narcoleptic two-handed steering wheel clutch that usually led the pickup past the white line onto gravel and grass... if only for a second. that second though, is what the video for 'The Funeral' made me think of.

Regardless, the video gave me a bittersweet memory and I've now attached some strong emotions to it, and I don't really wanna let go, does that make me some sort of girly man? so what? big deal...

I'll tell you what the fucking big deal is, the rest of the album doesn't live up to what that this one song created in my mind. Forget the pitchfork review, this band created their own hype with that damn song. The lesson: don't release the greatest song you'll ever write as your first single.

So, well, it turns out that the album is actually very nice, and it pains me to reach for comparisons here. My Morning Jacket have been cited in at least two other reviews, and I'll refrain from it, even though there are strong vocal and production similarities. The music, however, is much more complex. It deserves more. then again, you deserve more than a therapuetic rant. So, here it is, my review:

Band of Horses are like most of my friends, we get along best when we're all drunk and rowdy. The best songs are the ones that sound chaotic, messy, and a little pissed off. Besides 'The Funeral,' my favs are 'The Great Salt Lake,' whose big drum-beated verse and soft/loud chorus's drone gives away to a little soaring at the end of the track. And there's the horribly titled "Weed Party." It's forgiveable, though, because the party is actually a little tragic and quite a pretty romp. Comparisons be damned, these guys sound like Galaxie 500 in a bar in Nashville.