By: Dennis Cook

Be sure to check out the exclusive live clip of “Factory” captured in Germany at the end of this feature!

Ben Bridwell

Band of Horses is a special bunch. Attentive listeners picked up on it immediately upon putting the needle down on their 2006 debut Everything All The Time, floored by soaring, fully-formed jewels like “The Funeral” and “The Great Salt Lake.” The feeling only intensified with sophomore album Cease To Begin, which offered some glimpses of a playful side with “The General Specific” and hinted at a more widescreen band to come. That group – the celestial tickling, heart tugging gonna-be-big group – emerges in total on Infinite Arms (released May 18 on Columbia Records), which rings with an understanding about the impermanence of things that only folks who’ve spent nomadic years plying their trade can muster. It is also one of the most unabashedly beautiful rock records in ages. Infinite Arms doesn’t shy away from being expressly lovely and unguarded in its honesty, fathoms deep feeling and wounded conjecture..

“It felt like something was happening to us, and we’re really proud of the way it sounds,” says singer-songwriter-guitarist-bandleader Ben Bridwell. “In hindsight, you wonder if we should have done things better or differently, but we’re pretty happy now. You’ll catch wind of what people say after it’s out in the world and think, ‘Did we do our best?’ I think we did. Shit! [laughs].’ What can you do?”

Three years separates Infinite Arms from its predecessor Cease To Begin, and the many hours of gigging and miles of highway gobbled between shows is embedded in these grooves, which showcase the interlocking chemistry of the live version of Band of Horses in a studio setting for the first time.

“Ryan Monroe, the keyboardist and now playing guitar a lot, has been with us since we moved back to South Carolina in 2007. He’s such a talented dude and the fact that people haven’t heard his stamp on the band until now is almost criminal,” says Bridwell. “And Bill [Reynolds] (bass) and Tyler [Ramsey] (guitar) joined the band over three years ago, it was the natural thing to do to showcase everybody.”

The new material has a pleasantly lived-in feel, where the players have been crawling around inside these compositions for a while, so the album versions feel quite full and well structured. This time out, the band were able to discover what these tunes were all about before settling on final versions.

Band of Horses by Steven Walter

“No doubt about that [laughs]! We became very familiar with them over the two years doing the record. And with the obvious ones like ‘Older’ and ‘Evening Kitchen,’ we just knew the songs had to be on there,” says Bridwell. “I wondered if something like ‘Blue Beard’ would even make the record because in the end we had so many songs we didn’t know what would make the final cut. We had to see what the label wanted and hear everyone’s take on it was.”

There’s a cool sonic curiosity to Band of Horses, particularly on Infinite Arms, where they’re clearly excited to find cool noises and textures to layer onto what are pretty indestructible songwriting bones to begin with. Rather than some nostalgia exercise, Band of Horses is simply willing to put in the extra care and listening time to tweak things for maximum impact and pleasure.

“We ended up self-producing 75-percent of the record, and a lot of that should be attributed to Bill Reynolds who worked a lot on getting those cool sounds with the mixing engineer Dave Sardy and his crew. We spent so much time thinking about the damn thing that I’m glad it came out to be an asset to the record. We did SO much second-guessing of everything, so I’m really glad it came out sounding cool,” chuckles Bridwell. “We’ll be starting a new record in the next year and it’s tempting to go in the opposite direction. Instead of spending two years hammering out every detail, now we want to play it looser just to see what the other side is like [laughs]. I don’t know if that’d be better but I’d just like to see what it’s like. I want to do an easy record next time! Two weeks in and outÂ…and then we’ll obsess over it for two years!”

Since it’s a topic that comes up with Band of Horses, it needs mention that the band moved from vaunted indie label Sub Pop to major label Columbia records for Infinite Arms. While this can sometimes have a powerful influence on a group, Band of Horses’ change of label home strikes one more akin to R.E.M., who maintained firm artistic control of their work after joining Warner Brothers. More than anything, being on Columbia means that more people than ever are hearing about a great rock ‘n’ roll band that richly deserves to be heard.

Ben Bridwell by Jackie Kingsbury

“We were very comfortable where we were and have great relationships with Sub Pop. So, it’s hard to tell [what's different],” says Bridwell. “We have better management now, so it’s hard to tell who’s doing what because everyone is always doing something. Everyone at the label and in our mangement is so good at their jobs that there are always cool ideas popping up. They stretch us a bit more, encouraging us to do more promo acoustic things and stuff like that. We worked harder trying to move this record than any before. I’m not sure if breaking into the Top 10 on Billboard should be attributed to the band or the label or to the management company. All hands are on deck all the time, and growing our fan base over time hasn’t hurt.”

One of the treats of Infinite Arms is the carefully designed packaging, which incorporates an extended gatefold shot of a stormy sky and multiple pictures keyed to specific songs. It defies the small-mindedness of most CD-era packaging and offers an extension of the musical vision with longtime collaborator photographer/illustrator Christopher Wilson.

“With the previous two records we’d done the same thing, so thank God [Columbia Records] went along with us in incorporating Christopher Wilson’s visual concepts into our packaging,” says Bridwell. “It was pretty obvious we wanted to expand it a bit with this release, and it was cool to team up with Fat Possum, who did the deluxe vinyl edition with tons of Christopher Wilson stuff in it.”

Band of Horses 2010

With their latest release, Band of Horses is building towards an open-sky sound – the kind of music that ably and effectively reaches people in festival fields and amphitheatres all the way to the back of the grassy knoll and parking lot beyond. What’s impressive is how incredibly personal and entirely human the songs are despite their growing capacity for giant size effectiveness. It’s a rare combination, and often a mark of the really great acts that jumped from clubs to coliseums. The Eagles, Wilco and My Morning Jacket spring to mind, and kindred peers on their way to similar largess include Everest and Dawes. And like all these citations, Band of Horses sounds almost entirely like themselves and not merely an update of earlier, better bands. Originality and drive are essential to this kind of rise, and Band of Horses possesses both in abundance.

“Hopefully, subconsciously, I’ve steered things that way, to sound wide open,” says Bridwell, endearingly bashful and humbled by the idea of his band’s music being put in this category. “But I also think it comes from wanting the album to have the feel of a good road trip. When you go on a meaningful road trip and you look at all the albums you want to put on, hopefully [Infinite Arms] is one you choose when you’re going over the mountain pass.”

“One of the things I wanted to make clear with this album is that this is a band,” says Bridwell. “Hopefully, we can grow it to the point – it’s kinda dark to say it butÂ…If I was the one who dies first that the band has enough of their own songs in the catalog and that it’s grown to the point that it’s not a one-man show and can go on as its own entity. Hopefully, as we make more records and keep that kind of cohesion in place, hopefully it can go on forever with this group of dudes keeping this same aesthetic or changing it or whatever. I just hope it never stops.”

Band of Horses is currently on tour in Europe and returns to the States in September with a run of shows that includes the Greek Theatre in Berkeley (9/24), The Joint in Las Vegas (9/27) and The Fillmore in Denver (9/29). Find full tour dates here and enjoy the band in action below!

Band of Horses Tour Dates :: Band of Horses News :: Band of Horses Concert Reviews

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