Loving this record.



Sounds like My Morning Jacket crossed with some Shins to me.

You can download the song Funeral here http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/download.php?url=/downloads/free/The_Funeral366.mp3&mid=366

Here is some Sub Pop propoganda about it.

Achieving musical transcendence is a tricky feat, almost definitively. If it happens at all, it happens naturally — and perhaps nobody knows that better than Seattle, Washington's Band of Horses. Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell and guitarist Mat Brooke formed Band of Horses in 2004, after the dissolution of their nearly ten-year run in northwest melancholic darlings Carissa's Wierd. Carissa's Wierd trafficked in sadly beautiful orchestral pop, whose songs told unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss, leavened with defeatist humor. And, Band of Horses rises from the ashes of that well-loved and short-lived band. After playing music with each other for over a decade, Bridwell and Brooke picked up together again when Bridwell began fleshing out his compositions post-Carissa's. "It was really just a natural thing we started doing," explains Bridwell. Buoyed by Bridwell's warm, reverb-heavy vocals (which strangely channel a dichotomous blend of Wayne Coyne, Brian Wilson and Doug Martsch,) Band of Horses' woodsy, dreamy songs ooze with amorphous tension, longing and hope. At times raggedly epic ("The Great Salt Lake") and delicately pensive ("St. Augustine," "Monsters"), Everything All the Time is an album painted gorgeously in fragile highs and lows.

Track Listing:

1. The First Song
2. Wicked Gil
3. Our Swords
4. The Funeral
5. Part One
6. The Great Salt Lake
7. Weed Party
8. I Go To The Barn Because I Like The
9. Monsters
10. St. Augustine

I'd love to hear this but I've heard mixed things

i really want to hear this one. i've heard four tracks and liked them all a lot. i see the day i lost my dingle on the red line isn't listed; great song, hopefully they changed the title/words.

Band of Horses
Everything All the Time
[Sub Pop; 2006]
Rating: 8.8

"At every occasion, I'm ready for a funeral."

In the year between my father's diagnosis with cancer and his death, I dreaded the telephone. Whenever it rang, I jumped. Picking it up with a trepidant hand, I tried to quickly discern the caller's tone of voice, fearing the worst news. Whether intentionally or not, the line quoted above, from Band of Horses' debut album, Everything All the Time, perfectly evokes that particular anxiety. It's a sad line for any song, but Band of Horses singer Ben Bridwell's delivery isn't mopey or self-absorbed-- there are no intimate acoustic guitars or whispery male vocals accompanying these words. Instead, he belts them over soaring guitars and extroverted chords, all tempered with a stoicism that staves off histrionics. Turning despondency into indie majesty is a major talent of Band of Horses; their music is carefully balanced to evoke specific emotional responses while allowing space for personal projection.

More elemental than the lush dream-pop of Bridwell and Mat Brooke's former band Carissa's Wierd (the duo played all the instruments here before fleshing out the band with backing musicians), Band of Horses' sound will be immediately, invitingly familiar to anyone who reads this site regularly. Their guitar-heavy sound and Bridwell's echo-y vocals invite specific comparisons to labelmates the Shins as well as My Morning Jacket, and more general similarities can be noted with forebears such as Neil Young and the Ocean Blue. While apt, these comparisons seem restrictive and reductive, but their limitations can be illuminating. On quieter songs such as "St. Augustine", Bridwell recalls Jim James' reverb-heavy vocals, but he lacks the defining regional drawl; as a result, Band of Horses seem placeless. Where the Shins coil their songs tightly to spring out at the choruses, Bridwell and Brooke's tracks sprawl languorously-- more atmospheric than hooky, but nevertheless too structured and targeted to be considered jammy.

Band of Horses' alternately lucid and obscure songwriting remains life-size, even as their guitars swell beyond the everyday. Album centerpiece "The Great Salt Lake" begins with a jangly guitar that suggests early R.E.M., lying low to the ground during the verses until the chorus takes off. They also successfully work that contrast between earthbound and airborne on "The Funeral" and "Monsters", with its rickety banjo carving a rough path for a climactic finale.

Of course, if all of Everything strove for such catharsis, the repetition of builds and releases would become tedious and cheap. Wisely, Band of Horses show off a much broader dynamic, peppering the album with rangier numbers like "The First Song" and the churning, catchy "Wicked Gil". "Weed Party", the album's most upbeat track, even begins with what sounds like a spontaneous and genially goofy "yeee-haw!" Still, every element and track on Everything contributes to the album's wistful, twilit atmosphere, from its first cascading guitar chords to its final rueful strums. And instead of closing with the slow crescendo of "Monsters", they go out on a quieter note with "St. Augustine", a gently ebbing tune featuring both Horses singing together, Bridwell's higher-pitched voice anchored by Brooke's low whisper. So the album's not as grim as that introductory quotation would imply; the band's downheartedness is always offset by a sense of hope. As Bridwell sings on "Monsters", "If I am lost it's only for a little while."

Though Band of Horses aren't likely to be heralded as trailblazers, they do sound quietly innovative and genuinely refreshing over the course of these 10 sweeping, heart-on-sleeve anthems. Ultimately, the band's most winning trait is its delicate balance of elements-- between gloom and promise, quiet and loud, epic and ordinary, familiar and new, direct and elliptical, artist and listener. Each of these aspects makes the others sound stronger and more complex, making Everything All the Time an album that's easy to get lost in and even easier to love.

-Stephen M. Deusner, March 20, 2006

still my fave '06 record. glad to see Pfork give it such a deserving score for once.

psychobain's still being spoonfed his music taste by Pitchfork eh? This album was just too obvious, obvious it was going to be praised for no good reason by fork, obvious people like psychobain would jump on it solely because of the positive review, all of it. They're a horrible Shins/Garden State cash in act, as undeserving as it gets.

And I guess this means in a few weeks everyone will be beating off to the other new cred safeplay Danielson after another ridiculous pitchfork review.

I think you're just being an asshole.

Besides the obvious genre similarities, the only similarities I hear between this band and the Shins are in the vocals and I'm not picking up a huge similarity there. And why didn't Pitchfork fawn over that new Fruit Bats album? It sounds a lot like this type of music but they just gave it a 6 point something, as far as I can remember.

And that new Danielson album is good.

Because Fruit Bats had no hype in the run up to the album.

omg, i know about this band since 2005 (if i remember correctly)

i was just posting the fuckin review

thank you, you're welcome

Obvious or not, I dig this album. Definitely hear the MMJ influences. These guys have been generating buzz around Seattle for a year, so I don't feel an ounce of guilt for jumping on the bandwagon (or preordering the album from Sub Pop two months ago).

Could we please get a bigger image of the album?

In the year between my father's diagnosis with cancer and his death, I dreaded the telephone. Whenever it rang, I jumped. Picking it up with a trepidant hand, I tried to quickly discern the caller's tone of voice, fearing the worst news. Whether intentionally or not, the line quoted above, from Band of Horses' debut album, Everything All the Time, perfectly evokes that particular anxiety.

That sure is a quote.

it's hardly the band's fault if the reviewer says stuff like that. also, if you're going to pick out a quote from the review to belittle, there are better ones than that

"Weed Party", the album's most upbeat track, even begins with what sounds like a spontaneous and genially goofy "yeee-haw!

i saw them open for Iron & Wine last April (granted i just sorta enjoyed them at the time, the album is WAY better than i recall them being live).

and yeah, the album leaked in early December or so last year, and i'm still loving it.

if anyone knows me, they know how much i dislike Pfork most of the time, but when they get it right (imo), i definitely am happy for the bands because like them or not, a good pfork review means a lot of interest & sales (just ask local Mpls band Tapes N Tapes), for better or worse.

Is this an Eagles reference?

This album is OK. Certainly nothing to write home about.

j.

and the backlash starts... NOW