“Band of Horses is ethereal, otherwordly and completely inimitable, and listening to ‘Everything All The Time’ is, in the truest sense of the word, an experience.”
- Delusions Of Adequacy (9/10)
“An astoundingly seductive debut.”
- Drawer B (9/10)
Achieving musical transcendence is a tricky feat, almost definitively. If it happens at all, it happens naturally – ask the likes of The Beatles, Beach Boys, Neil Young, even Mercury Rev or of course, Sub Pop’s very own Band of Horses.
Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell and bassist Mat Brooke formed Band of Horses in 2004, after the dissolution of their nearly 10 year run in northwest darlings Carissa’s Weird. Their earlier group trafficked in sadly beautiful orchestral pop, with songs which told of unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss, leavened with a defeatist humour. And so, Band of Horses rises, with a phoenix-like touch of elegance, from the ashes of that well-loved group, with their own brand of gorgeous, swelling pop.
‘Everything All The Time’ is the group’s stunning debut album and it finds them flexing their beautiful, pastoral pop smarts, with Bridwell’s warm, reverb-heavy vocals [channeling a strange combo of Wayne Coyne and Brian Wilson] lending Band of Horses’ woodsy, dreamy songs an amorphous tension, longing and hope, which only serves to make them more compelling still.
At times raggedly epic [“The Great Salt Lake”] and delicately pensive [“St Augustine” and “Monsters”], the Band of Horses’ glorious debut ‘Everything All The Time’ is an album painted gorgeously in fragile highs and lows – and comes highly recommended.
“Though they aren’t likely to be heralded as trailblazers, they do sound quietly innovative and genuinely refreshing over the course of these ten sweeping, heart-on-sleeve anthems.”
- Pitchfork
“A damned great indie rock record.”
- CMG.com (8/10)
“An album that’s easy to get lost in and even easier to love.”
- Pitchforkmedia.com (8.8/10)