Band of Horses is Running Wild (Pause for Laughter)

Let's get one thing straight, I have no musical aptitude whatsoever. So any judgments I make about music are purely as an avid listener and fan. I am in no way shape or form an expert in any kind of field. That being said,I love Band Of Horses, and that being said, the new Band of Horses album Infinite Arms is very bad and you shouldn't buy it. It should be noted that Infinite arms is a sub-par indie rock album and should not be confused with Enchanted Arms which is a sub-par JRPG for the PS3 and XBox-360.

Now I am aware that this album released a couple of months ago but my blog started yesterday and I have a little catch up to play on my unsolicited opinions. Now let me rephrase my previous statement; the album isn't bad it just isn't good. I guess one could say it's only okay but that seems like it's not descriptive enough. It is okay as long as you have never heard Band of Horses before. Band of horses is an indie rock band formed in Seattle in 2004. Now if you have never heard of Band of Horses, what you need to understand is that the whole thing kind of hinges on the very odd yet undeniably melodic voice of Ben Bridwell. It is like a large bird calling. It isn't what you expect but if you are anything like me, it exactly what you are looking for; interesting, captivating, and emotively satisfying. What I mean by that is that even if you don't know what he is saying, or know exactly what he is saying but have no idea what he means, you feel like you know exactly how he feels. It will elicit an emotional response.

This has been the case for their first full album Everything All the Time and their sophomore effort Cease to Begin but something is amiss on their third studio effort. Now one easy observation to make is that it has a far higher production quality. This is true and it may be a factor but while their previous simplicity was charming it was not what made them worth listening to. and Cease to Begin actually had a pretty high production sheen to it as well. I think the problem is that the songs are dull. I mean this in two ways one is obvious and one is less so but more technically accurate. Firstly they are pretty boring to listen to. I re-listened to this whole album driving back home from Tallahassee today trying give it another chance. I so wanted to like this album. But such was not the case, it bored me the whole time (with one notable exception but we will discuss this later.)

The second way I mean this is that they have literally dulled their performance. It isn't as sharp sounding or emotively satisfying. The problem they have seemed to run into is simply that someone decided to reign Bidwell in instead of letting his vocals soar above the track. They wanted the instrumentation to be as important as the singing which I am sure means a lot to the members of the band who are not Ben Bidwell and this is going to upset Band of Horses fans who like what they have been getting.

Now it is at this point that I need to argue against myself a bit. It is perfectly acceptable for bands to change their sounds. I support this line of thinking wholeheartedly. Music and musicians evolve and what they want to experiment with will change also and it is irresponsible for fans to demand that bands and artists keep pumping out cookie cutter work of what they have always done. That is how we end up with the horrible pop music that keeps assailing the airwaves and makeing radio absolutely un-listenable. Weezer ran into this problem when after they released Pinkerton and connected with a certain type of fan they continued to make albums that kept reflecting who the band was not who the fans of Pinkerton were and it upset them a great deal. Now Weezer still makes great music; their latest album Raditude is great. But it is not for the same people that Pinkerton was for because the band is different than they were 14 years ago.

The problem is that they way Band of Horses has grown in this case isn't good but different; it is just uninspired and meandering sing-songs. It is like someone said, "hey, you know those people that don't like or understand our music? Let's make an album for them." Which from what I read is apparently doing pretty well for them from a marketing standpoint. It debuted at 21 in the UK and 7 on Billboard 200. I guess I just find in disappointing when good music is unheard and "eh" music is lauded. For the sake of full-disclosure, there is a good song on this album called blue beard. It is reminiscent of the band's former glory. But it is not worth buying the album just pay the 99 cents on iTunes for it and leave the rest alone. It is not worth it. Let's try and show Band of Horses that we love them enough to only expect the best from them.