Band Of Horses
Everything All The Time

THE REVIEW

Shot straight to the top of my personal chart of the "Best Albums of 2006", this "Everything All The Time", the debut album by "Band Of Horses", is simply an excellent album, where the verb of American guitar-driven indie rock is conjugated according to the best standards, destined to remain in your CD player for a long time.

Immersed in a suspended atmosphere, the beauty that arises from the simplicity of the compositions is sometimes truly disarming: epic and melancholic, Benjamin Bridwell (the main lyricist and lead vocalist) and Mat Brooke (both former members of Carissa's Wierd, also seen around with Iron & Wine) have managed to build an alchemy in which the delicate balance of the parts is happily achieved. They raise their voice, but do not shout. They whisper, but do not mumble. They languish, but do not sadden. In short, this album has the cathartic power of taking away all the tensions accumulated during the day like a calm river.

Ethereal, undoubtedly, but by no means diaphanous: it leaves rich sediments in our consciousness. A classic album to listen to in the confines of one's den or nonetheless estranged from the world, alone with one's woes, it's also one of the few albums recently released that features more peaks than an alpine arc. It's true that it doesn't add anything new to the discourse of less oblique indie, but who cares! Composed of 10 arrows all aimed at our hearts, all very solid, all endowed with a life of their own, the only critique that could initially be made is perhaps in Bridwell's "slacker" singing: sometimes it's really difficult to discern the words of the otherwise distinctive lyrics. A work that never loses its edge thanks to the skillful alternation of more upbeat tracks ("Wicked Gil", "Weed Party", "Our Swords", "The Great Salt Lake") with languid down-tempo ("The First Song", "The Funeral", "Monsters"), it leaves you satisfied and never prone to hit the skip button on the CD player.

In general, the compositions are built on layers of guitar arpeggios (both electric and acoustic), usually drowned in reverberations of slowly strummed chords. The rhythm section is solid, never overdoing it. The amalgamation of elements creates a very cohesive sound, with a rich alternation of high and low modulations, bringing all the tracks to a dimension at once intimate, yet open to broader spaces, typically anthemic, with a country-folk undertone; any electronic contamination abolished.

Undoubtedly, it's a work in the line of somewhat overused sounds, but when a band manages to pull out a ballad like "St. Augustine", all can be forgiven.