Band of Horses | Cease to Begin
At some point, I'm gonna have to stop listening to this record. Or at least switch it up for a while. Cease to Begin picks up where Everything All The Time left off; its dark and morbid, yet simple chorded and jangly and harmonius.
At first, I wasn't floored with the album as a complete piece. Maybe it was the sequencing? Kayceman said be patient, I kept it in the rotation and started to listen to it on random, and it grew like a weed party.

The album is filled with so many internal struggles, "No One's Gonna Love You" is the perfect example of this. You can understand where the struggles come from, as the Horses lost a founding member "looking like a limb torn off" and moved back to South Carolina "wheeling through an endless fall" and tried to figure out where this quick trajectory of success left them "the ever living ghost of what once was." Then its pretty again ("Anything to make you smile...") and then the hook comes at you with "Things start splittin at the seams and now the whole thing comes tumbling down." Yet it's sung with such beautiful harmonies that its a perfect song. The harmonies from this band give me chills, and while they didn't deliver it live last year, the new incarnation is much better, so go check 'em out live. We know you can't have the darkness without the light and when you can mix them together correctly it creates something akin to the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. The rapid fire geetar strumming is sorta like "running the blender in a lightning storm" - kinda like mixing vinegar and baking soda and getting the volcano to erupt. Even the lines about nothing - "run to the general store for nothing specific" resonate so perfectly. They will have their detractors who will claim BoH is trying to be this or that, or the albums are short, but their formula works for me. I'd rather have one short album a year than a shitty record any day. Hey Bridwell&Co, not sure why, but "no one's gonna love you more than I do." - TK

One Track Recommendation: If you do one thing today, listen to "No One's Gonna Love You" three times and try to tell me that is not a great f-ckin song! Song of the Year nomination from me.

Labels: BandOfHorses, harmony, rhapsody, SubPop