Track Listing

1. The First Song
2. Wicked Gil
3. Our Swords
4. The Funeral
5. Part One
6. The Great Salt Lake
7. Weed Party
8. I Go To The Barn Cause I Like The
9. Monsters
10. St. Augustine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #511 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-21
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell and bassist Mat Brooke formed Band Of Horses in 2004 after the dissolution of their nearly ten-year run in northwest melancholic darlings Carissa's Wierd. Carissa's Wierd trafficked in sadly beautiful orchestral pop, whose songs told unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss, leavened with defeatist humor. Band Of Horses rises from those ashes. Buoyed by Bridwell's warm, reverb-heavy vocals (which channel a strange brew of Wayne Coyne, Neil Young, and Doug Martsch), the group's woodsy, dreamy songs ooze with amorphous tension, longing, and hope. Both raggedly epic and delicately pensive, this is an album painted gorgeously in fragile highs and lows.

Amazon.com
This Seattle-based band was formed from the ashes of the incredibly talented Carissa's Wierd [sic], whose mopey and self-deprecating songs were like some magical and baroque combination of the Magnetic Fields, Cat Power, and Leonard Cohen. Longtime friends of Iron and Wine, few fans in their native Pacific Northwest could understand why Carissa's weren't huge. But they weren't, and after three albums and few folks really caring, they naturally broke up. Band of Horses, led by ultra-charming CW bassist Ben Bridwell, is a remarkably different, though just as radically excellent, brand of indie-pop sulk. These songs are anthems to ambivalence, and Bridwell's lovely high-pitched trill will please any fan of Built to Spill, the Shins, and Modest Mouse. It takes a few listens to sink in, but Everything is transcendent, shimmering, layered, and smartass emo-pop fully ready for stadium saturation. --James Conde

Entertainment Weekly
"Lovers of sky-high wails and sturdy guitar rock ... should find Band of Horses revelatory."

Customer Reviews

Band of Horses
Great music. I bought this CD after I bought Cease to Begin by the same artist. The two CDs by Band of Horses have been a regular in my CD player ever since. I highly recommend Band of Horses.

Great band, must check these guys out at least once!
I am a fan of indie / folk music such as Hayden, Richard Buckner, Mark Kozelek (of Red House Painters / Sun Kil Moon) and Kathleen Edwards, just for a sample of my music tastes... This band is growing on me more and more with every listen of the music that I have found so far.

I fully expect to attend a concert of theirs in the future. It's best described in my own words as a sound of "The Shins" mixed in with "Coldplay" with a dash of "Racounters"...Very good!

sublime
Some of the negative critiques of this record mystify me. Sure, the lead singer is reminiscent of Neil Young and My Morning Jacket, but so what? Every song is sublime. I can't stop playing this record. Buy it. And while you're at it, check out Sera Cahoone's terrific album, Only As the Day is Long. (She's the drummer on this record.)