Band of the Week: Band of Horses

It’s funny how sometimes having the right in to a band can change everything, like how I somehow didn’t get into Chicago’s post rock giants Tortoise until I heard them in the fantastically lazy soundtrack to artist Thomas Campbell’s long board surfing movie, The Seedling.

It was much the same for me recently with Seattle’s Band of Horses. A few months ago, I started hearing friends whose musical taste I really respect talking about them. They’d just played in town and my buddy Jay was basically swooning about how good they were. So, I tracked down their album Everything All The Time and ... it didn’t click for me at first. I think it was a week when I’d gotten a few new cds that I’d been looking forward to for some time, and I probably wrote off the album quickly and didn’t come back to it for awhile.

Then a bit later, I heard the track The Funeral separately from the rest and everything just clicked into place. From the song's lonesome first few chords to lead Ben Bridwell singing about his fear of the phone ringing during his father’s losing fight with cancer – not necessarily sadly, but just thoughtfully and somewhat melancholy – I was hooked. After that, I started listening to the rest of the album and began really appreciating how substantive everything on it is. And yeah, I haven’t been able to stop playing it since.

Worrying that I’d miss them play now that my interest has been piqued, I snagged tickets for their upcoming June show a few weeks back. And my fears seem to be well-merited since Ticketweb is now pointing people to Sea Level Records for tickets at this point. So, I'd recommend stopping by to check if they have any left at your earliest possible convenience.

Like today.

Band of Horses will play on June 30th at The Echo, which is in the Echo Park neighborhood of LA at 1822 Sunset Blvd. Doors open at 8:30 and Mt Egypt is opening up.