Band Of Horses: Why Are You OK

BAND OF HORSES: WHY ARE YOU OK (2016)

1) Dull Times/The Moon; 2) Solemn Oath; 3) Hag; 4) Casual Party; 5) In A Drawer; 6) Hold On Gimme A Sec; 7) Lying Under Oak; 8) Throw My Mess; 9) Whatever, Wherever; 10) Country Teen; 11) Barrel House; 12) Even Still.

I must say that I have to take some offense at the title. It is staring me right in the eye, silently implying that I am OK when I shouldn't be — even though I am most definitely not OK, nor do I feel like a particularly careless bather who just happened to climb out back on the beach, only to dis­cover all of his/her clothes pilfered by bad fortune. It is, in fact, somewhat presumptuous to assume that the average buyer of your records is doing that because he/she needs to be shaken up from happy bourgeois slumber and face the harsh realities of a ruthless modern world. At least, last time Arcade Fire tried to do this with Funeral, it did not work, so how could it work with a band approximately ten times less talented?..

Fortunately, one listen to the album is enough to dispel the prior impression. Ben Bridwell would never agree (not in public, at least) with this assessment, but really, Why Are You OK works best if you not only drop your expectations down a deep well, but, in fact, agree to interpret it as a veritable musical anthem to inactivity, casualness, and even artistic impotence. It features some of the slowest, simplest, most meditative and event-less music written by Ben Bridwell, ever, and from time to time it even drops certain hints that this is the only thing worth doing today. The very first track, for instance, greets you with the cheerful "Listen close wherever you go / Dull times, let them seep into your bones" — and musically, the combination of the tempo, the dro­ning guitar, and the lulling vocals suggest that Bridwell may have spent a bit too much time re­cently listening to the entire catalog of Beach House. Only where Beach House put their faith in the creation of a «magical» atmosphere, here, while retaining the trance-like aura of the music, Band Of Horses offer a more earthly, realistic vision.

This is neither too good... nor too bad. Just like the last time around (with Mirage Rock), I don't feel like any of these songs contain any staying power — but unlike the last time around, it's not even a matter of them pretending to contain it. It's very much an album of little, mundane things, enveloped in some humble, mundane sorrow: Band Of Horses are caught in the middle of a de­bilitating vacuum, and since 2016 does look an awful lot like a debilitating vacuum on the whole, Why Are You OK is perhaps even more symbolic of the void to me than it is to its creators. In all of these songs, they either sing about meaningless trifles (ʽIn A Drawerʼ manages to become the most memorable number on the album by featuring the repetitive hook "Found it in the drawer, found it in the drawer, took a little time but I found it in the drawer" — we're never told what the it actually is, but who really cares?), or ask pointless questions whose only purpose is to undermine your self-confidence (ʽHagʼ: "Are you truly in love? absolutely in love? you're happy enough, are you fully in love?"), or produce anthemic invocations delivered in such cold tones that you're sure they don't really mean it (ʽBarrel Houseʼ: "bring some peace to this world and keep passin' it on"). In short, this is an album about trying to make something out of nothing, because what else is there to be made in the first place?

Musically, there's not a lot of surprises here: by now we know only too well that Band Of Horses like a soft-rock sound with soaring production, and this time they made it even softer and more soaring than before. The lead single, ʽCasual Partyʼ, accompanied by a fairly bizarre video of the band members forced to play the song for a feast of cartoonish aliens, is really atypical of the album — too fast and upbeat, almost like a jangle-power-pop number, although the lyrical mes­sage is pretty much the same and even more explicitly than ever ("since Ben got that, he's a socio­path", they state without blinking). Most of the rest is far slower and drearier, really — imagine a Beach House record played by rootsy bearded guys. Occasionally, a simple sentimental note still slips by (ʽWhatever, Whereverʼ is Bridwell's ʽBeautiful Boyʼ, but it is too syrupy for my tastes), but really, the music as such does not feel depressing: the point is not to depress, but rather to freeze, and it does have a comatose effect — you might want to throw on some AC/DC once it's over, to spring your muscles back to action.

No thumbs up, anyway; I am not sure that I will remember how even one song goes on here in a week's time or so, but I might remember the strange overall effect — and the fact that I did not really enjoy that effect, even if I felt it. And I hope I'm interpreting all of this right, because if I'm not, then I'm losing my last crumbs of interest in this band.

Band Of Horses: Acoustic At The Ryman

BAND OF HORSES: ACOUSTIC AT THE RYMAN (2014)

1) Marry Song; 2) Slow Cruel Hands Of Time; 3) Detlef Schrempf; 4) Everything's Gonna Be Undone; 5) No One's Gonna Love You; 6) Factory; 7) Older; 8) Wicked Gil; 9) The Funeral; 10) Neighbor; 11*) Weed Party.

Acoustic? Aren't these guys always acoustic? Oh no, that's right, they aren't — it's just my memo­ry playing predictable tricks on me, because that is the way you are going to remember your bearded guys playing your usual «Americana» stuff. Anyway, this here is indeed their version of Unplugged, recorded over two nights in April 2013 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and released as their first and, so far, only official live album.

Band Of Horses are not the best band in the world, and you are not going to be subjected to any big surprises. The songs, handpicked in a more or less representative manner off each of the band's four albums, are stripped down, but not significantly changed otherwise — you get to hear them in a more «intimate» presentation, with more emphasis on the vocals and, sometimes, extra piano parts that take the place of orchestral and other overdubs, but mood-wise, everything stays the same. No reinventions, fresh interludes, jamming, no in-between-song banter even, which may be a plus in the context of an actual show, but a minus in the context of a live record.

An even harsher minus is that quite a few of these songs worked well only because they were lushly arranged in the first place. Infinite Arms, the band's best album, is only represented by two songs, and the monumental orchestral grandeur of ʽFactoryʼ, especially its coda, is hopeless­ly lost in transition to the live acoustic environment — the «compensating» piano just does not cut it. It sounds like a pleasant demo version. If you cut away grandeur without replacing it with some well thought-out subtlety, what's to like? Bare bones are bare bones, and should be left for under­takers and grave robbers.

One good thing I am ready to admit here is that the vocals are beyond reproach: solo parts and harmonies all sound exceptionally nice, and the material seems very well rehearsed. It is a plea­sant listen all right. But even the song selection is generally questionable (most likely, they were picking the songs that seemed like the obvious candidates for transfer to acoustic), so that I could not recommend the album even in the status of a decent, representative intro to the band's catalog — on the contrary, only some very serious fans of Ben Bridwell will find sufficient reason to own it. Not to mention that, if you really want yourself some of that heart-on-a-sleeve bearded-guy acoustic Americana, there's always The Avett Bros., and frankly, in this kind of setting I could easily lose track of the difference between the two. Thumbs down.

Band Of Horses: Mirage Rock

BAND OF HORSES: MIRAGE ROCK (2012)

1) Knock Knock; 2) How To Live; 3) Slow Cruel Hands Of Time; 4) A Little Biblical; 5) Shut-In Tourist; 6) Dum­b­ster World; 7) Electric Music; 8) Everything's Gonna Be Undone; 9) Feud; 10) Long Vows; 11) Heartbreak On The 101; 12*) Mirage Rock; 13*) Irmo Bats; 14*) Reilly's Dream; 15*) Catalina; 16*) Bock.

Nothing lasts forever, and few things last shorter than the fruitful periods of modern rock bands. Two years earlier, Band Of Horses seemed to settle into a comfortable pattern of writing not par­ticularly original, but quite seemingly beautiful music. With Mirage Rock, they almost seem bent on proving to us that they do not want to conform to patterns — and in order to do that, they are willing to sacrifice beauty, depth, and quality for the sake of change.

First things first: if you have a sound rooted in the roots, is it that necessary to choose a moment for placing production duties in the hands of the man who produced The Eagles? Glyn Johns does have an impressive, but a very uneven, pedigree: this is also the man, after all, who went on from producing Who's Next to producing It's Hard, meaning a total lack of guarantee. I have no idea if it is Johns' presence that determines the transition from the fairly sophisticated sound layers of Infinite Arms to the much more sparse and simple arrangements on Mirage Rock — I suppose that Bridwell must have wanted this shift in approach — but it is Johns' presence that orchestrates the whole deal, and the deal sure goes wrong.

Apparently, most of the album was recorded «live in the studio», with lots of re­hearsals required before the final takes. Since none of the band members are really seasoned, notorious musicians, clearly more energy must have been spent on «getting it all to work» rather than on concentrating on the melody and texture side. Result? Mirage Rock sounds about as impressive and memorable as anything done by the kids in your local art college band (just enter your ZIP code to get the name) — maybe worth relaxing to while having a beer or two after a hard day's work on a cold winter evening, then moving on forever.

Nothing illustrates this point better than ʽKnock Knockʼ, the lead-in track and the first single re­leased from the album. If there is only one classic example allowed of «impotence in music», this here is a great fine candidate — the song opens up ringing, banging, and whoo-whooing in an­them mode, and then you spend four minutes looking for release without getting it. Verse number one... bridge... verse number two... bridge... where's the frickin' chorus? Wait, what do you mean that was the chorus? That was just the bridge, wasn't it? You mean I'm supposed to sing along to "knockin' on the door, knockin' on the door, knockin' on the door" as the highest climactic point of the anthem? Can you imagine — oh, I don't know — a ʽDead End Streetʼ that goes straight back to the verse melody after "we are strictly second class, and we can't understand"? And this song doesn't even have that sort of verse melody.

Most of the rest is equally disenchanting. All sorts of by-the-book midtempo pop / country-rock grooves that barely ever rise above the ground, and float out of memory as soon as they are over (quite often, even way before they are over). Everything is superficially melodic, soft, warm, ne­ver overproduced, never irritating, but there is nothing in the world that would compel me to go back to these songs after I have patiently endured the record four times from top to bottom, and never even once did it manage to hit a nerve that wasn't already worn down to insensitivity by way, way too many hits in the past. So to speak.

Poking half-blindly at the titles, ʽA Little Biblicalʼ is not even the tiniest bit biblical, but it is al­most a good, upbeat, well-rounded power pop number — maybe The Alan Parsons Project could have emphasized its stronger sides and polished it to the state of one of their unforgettable ditties such as ʽSooner Or Laterʼ (particularly if they'd found a less ordinary vocalist than Bridwell). ʽDumbster Worldʼ stylishly toys with Neil Young-style folk-rock gloominess, but then crashes into Garbage Planet when the mid-section starts «rocking out» in generic alt-rock fashion. And that's about all there is, really. By the way, quiet country stuff like ʽLong Vowsʼ does sound like the early Eagles, and even though I am not a mortal enemy of the early Eagles, what use do I have for a 21st century imitation of the early Eagles?..

One thing that does indirectly confirm that Glyn Johns was indeed chiefly responsible for this failure is the bonus EP on the deluxe edition, called Sonic Ranch Sessions: this was apparently re­corded by the band without Johns' participation, and the five tracks on the EP are much more re­markable than the album itself. For instance, ʽReilly's Dreamʼ is pinned to a hallucinatory oscilla­ting guitar line, turning it into homely dream-pop; ʽCatalinaʼ is saved from immediate death by some amusing experiments with Beatlesque vocal modulations; and ʽBockʼ has a better melan­cholic mix of piano, organ, guitar, and vocals than any other track on the whole package. This is a highly subjective feeling — it's not like we're talking heaven-and-earth scales here anyway — but it did come from somewhere, so I'm noting it just in case. But bonus tracks are bonus tracks, and the album per se gets an assured thumbs down — if you can't do better than the Eagles, why not just turn into an Eagles tribute band? More honest that way.

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Band Of Horses: Infinite Arms

BAND OF HORSES: INFINITE ARMS (2010)

1) Factory; 2) Compliments; 3) Laredo; 4) Blue Beard; 5) On My Way Back Home; 6) Infinite Arms; 7) Dilly; 8) Evening Kitchen; 9) Older; 10) For Annabelle; 11) NW Apt.; 12) Neighbor.

For his third album, Bridwell decided a major structural change couldn't hurt, and proclaimed that, from now on, Band Of Horses would be a real, authentic band. Changing one horse in midstream (Rob Hampton is out) for a whopping three (former guest unit Tyler Ramsey is fixed in place, and multi-instrumentalists Ryan Monroe and Bill Reynolds also join the fold), Ben has stated his intention that that's the way it's gonna be, for some time at least. Friendship, partnership, demo­cracy, free flow and exchange of ideas, the works.

The fact that seven out of twelve songs here are still exclusively credited to Bridwell, three more at least co-credit him, and the only non-Ben lead vocal is by Monroe on 'Older', somewhat belies that statement — in the end, the stability of this new 5-piece ensemble depends on the compara­tive weight of all these other guys' egos. But there is no denying, for me at least, that Infinite Arms is the best BoH record so far — it could easily remain as their unbeatable top masterpiece — and if it has anything to do with the merits of the new band members, then it's simply more fat food for the argument that the best pop music of our time is usually done in collaboration. Collec­tivism rules, as any respectable Bolshevik could tell you.

Third time's the charm, in more than one way: it took me three listens to be able to assert that, on his own third attempt, Bridwell nailed it. Jaded music lovers probably won't be floored, grounded, or pinned against the wall by the massive cathartic waves of the record, but there is really not a single bad or completely uninteresting track on it. It is utterly traditionalist in its approach to me­lody, texture, and emotion, yet still manages to scoop out a killer bunch of rootsy hooks to prove that even in 2010, you can still be traditionalist and get away with it.

The most frequent comparisons were to Neil Young, but the five-piece BoH is anything but a collective Neil Young-wannabe. Yes, the backbone of the music is still American folk and count­ry, and Bridwell's vocal tone is lightly similar to Neil's (although far less whiny... and no Canadi­an accent, either), but it will take you, at most, the opening fifteen seconds of 'Factory' to under­stand that Infinite Arms is at least as much fed by the indie-pop scene as it is by «Americana». If anything, I'd rather say they were channelling the spirit of early Wilco here — this is all some­what close to what Jeff Tweedy used to sound like, before A-R-T got the better of him and he could no longer appear before cowboy audiences with a straight face.

'Factory' is the album's «grandest» number, with a strings-and-brass «wall of sound» breaking its way through your living room. It is not at all complex, its major musical ideas are all over by the time the intro is replaced with the verse melody, yet it feels very genuine — uplifting in a 'Hey Jude' manner, despite the strangely depressed accompanying lyrics. For that reason, it may well claim its place among the «Biggest» compositions of 2010 (not that anybody really gives a damn, because the «bigger» well-written songs get these days, the fewer their audiences).

Much of the album is just mid-tempo rock, with hoarse guitars and generic tempos, but also with catchy choruses and passionate solos, e. g. the lead single 'Compliments', with its cryptic-apoca­lyp­tic message; or 'Laredo', sounding like a gallant medieval ballad re-written for bashing drums and feedback-drenched guitar; or 'NW Apt.', the album's fastest number, galloping along in post-punk mode. But I like them even more when they drop all signs of the RAWK attitude — this is where Bridwell's mastery of hooks becomes fully evident.

Thus, the vocal melody of 'Blue Beard' is sheer McCartney, always a nice thing to say, and you don't even get to snicker at the banality of the accompanying lyrics (because these, as usual, are inscrutable); and 'On My Way Back Home' gives Brian Wilson a gentle tap on the shoulder, since the way Ben sings the song title is an exact quotation of the line from 'Sloop John B'. (I wish I could take first credit for discovering that, but obviously I cannot — google the idea and you'll see the whole Internet has been buzzing about the resemblance ever since the album came out.)

From time to time, the band comes out with great melodic lines as well — the slide guitar bits on 'For Annabelle' (otherwise, a rather languid mellow ballad), that sharp tone and cool bends and all, are unforgettable. Excursions into «light» sunshine pop ('Dilly'), acoustic romance ('Evening Kit­chen'), and even formulaic country-rock (Monroe's 'Older', redeemed by one of the album's most inviting sing-along choruses) all work as well.

In short, I just cannot find any grounds to complain — except, perhaps, a bit of surprise at 'Neighbor', the album's least idea-packed song, serving as its coda. It seeks to give the record as grand an exit as 'Factory' gave it an entry, but does not qua­lify, certainly not when they go from quiet to loud and all you have for the last three minutes are these silly crashing power chords, wave upon wave of them. A little anti-climactic after all the subtlety; which will certainly not pre­vent me from a raving variety of thumbs up as the final judgement. If Infinite Arms is to be ta­ken as Bridwell's claim for taking the current lead in the «Roots Meets Arts» movement, I'd say he comes out as a fairly serious contender.

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Band Of Horses: Cease To Begin

BAND OF HORSES: CEASE TO BEGIN (2007)

1) Is There A Ghost; 2) Ode To LRC; 3) No One's Gonna Love You; 4) Detlef Schrempf; 5) The General Specific; 6) Lamb On The Lam (In The City); 7) Islands On The Coast; 8) Marry Song; 9) Cigarettes, Wedding Bands; 10) Win­dow Blues.

The recording of this album was marked by huge lineup changes — in fact, just about everyone simply quit, tacitly acknowledging that «Band Of Horses» was the individual brainchild of Ben Bridwell and that Ben Bridwell alone would be responsible for all the creative activity under that moniker. To be fair, new band members Rob Hampton (bass and second guitar) and Creighton Barrett (drums) are both co-credited as writers on each of the album's tracks, but you will have to ask them yourself how much they contributed to the fleshing out of the melodies.

By now, it is clear that Bridwell wants us all to view him as an enigma, and he is in a fairly good position to do it, too, because it does not happen every day that you meet such a transparently roots-rock-sprung artist bent on bending the clichés and conventions of his native genre into odd shapes that either do not make sense at all, or make it in a parallel universe that you couldn't prove to have visited even if you really have. The lyrics are mostly inscrutable (case in point — 'Detler Schrempf', named after a German basketball player but featuring no connection between the guy and the actual words whatsoever). The melodies, in a way, are too.

A few of the songs are fairly «normal» mid-tempo country shuffles, softly brushed drums and steel guitars and what-not ('Marry Song'; 'Window Blues'). Just as often, they only use typically rootsy chord changes and bits of rootsy arrangements within an indie-pop or alt-rock aesthetics. This means marrying the unmarriable: the don't-give-a-damn, come-what-may attitude characte­ristic of roots-rock with the sharp rebellious desperation of the wanna-change-the-world (but smart-enough-to-understand-the-futility) indie approach. This means it's all interesting and shit, but uh what's the real deal? This guy may simply be too smart for his own good.

When Rolling Stone selected 'Is There A Ghost' as one of its top 100 songs of 2007, the reason­ing behind the choice went «Southern rock goes shoegazing in this atmospheric jam», which I, for one, thought was almost uncharacteristically precise for the one magazine that all of us usually prefer to put down. But I feel vindicated on the second part of the description: «There are fewer than fifteen words in the lyrics, but packed into Ben Bridwell’s vocals is a whole doctoral thesis on what it means to be bummed out».

Bummed out? The words, repeated over and over until you start wondering if they really mean something, are: "I could sleep / When I lived alone / Is there a ghost in my house?" It is the easi­est thing in the world to surmise it's all about depression, because most indie music is about de­pression, one way or another. But how do we know it's true? That the effect, with all the jangling folk guitars and the waves of echo around the vocals, is pretty and elegant, is undeniable; but is there actual sadness here, or misery, or any other sort of discontent? That one could write a docto­ral thesis around the song is obvious (because one can easily launch into a miriad different issues from here), but would the subject of the thesis really be dedicated to the art of «bumming out»? I could just as well argue that the song is about the miracle of discovering the unexpected — and that its message is one of cautious optimism rather than bitter pessimism.

The album's other single, 'No One's Gonna Love You', must have been specially designed as a commercial antidote to the opaqueness of 'Is There A Ghost': not only does it have the catchiest vocal melody on the album, but it is also the least intriguing one — in fact, this is as close to ge­neric «adult contemporary» as Bridwell ever got; just replace the ringing guitar line with a soft synth pattern and the man turns into Chris de Burgh. Even the lyrics are transparent: it's all over for the both of us, but we still love each other blah blah blah Wuthering Heights blah blah blah.

I would rather urge you to check out such tunes as the above-mentioned 'Detler Schempf' (beau­tiful, McCartney-worthy vocal phrasing on the "when eyes can't look at you any other way" cho­rus), 'The General Specific' (simple, uplifting, anthemic, truck-driving music for all those who hate driving trucks), and 'Islands On The Coast', which is exactly the way And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (Aural Nerves) would sound if they only cut down on the crappy noise level and let their sense of melody show through — a cool, inspiring, catchy power pop song that also instructs you that "when islands want to coast, they'll know how", and perhaps some day you will, too, if you manage to convince yourself that Ben Bridwell knows more answers to life's questions than you do.

Personally, I don't: I think most of these lyrics are puffed-up nonsense. But I also think that the melodic gift of Ben Bridwell is undeniable, and that the songwriting on Cease To Begin is, in ge­neral, a huge improvement over the first album. Not only is this guy getting harder and harder to categorize and pigeonhole, but he also exercises better and better care over his hooks. Now all that is really missing is a little more diversity in the arrangements: the lack of talented instrumen­talists or seriously inventive «flourishes» will make many people turn away from the record, de­claring it «boring», and not even my thumbs up will make any of them give it a second chance. Which, I think, it deserves regardless of the competition.

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Band Of Horses: Everything All The Time

BAND OF HORSES: EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME (2006)

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 Because I Like The; 9) Monsters; 10) St. Augustine.

Band Of Horses is basically the brainchild of Ben Bridwell, a guy who formerly used to sell pizza in Tuc­son, Arizona, but, over a period of ten years, went on to be selling loud indie-pop music to... well, honestly, I have no idea who exactly is buying his albums, but supposedly, there is very little overlap between his current customers and his old ones.

In between these two extremes, he also played drums and wrote some songs for a little-known «sadcore» outfit called Carissa's Wierd (sic), hanging around Seattle; once that institution (the band, not Seattle) col­lapsed, he learned to play himself some guitar and, taking some old friends and some new discoveries along for his own personal project, formed Band Of Horses. The line­up here, beyond Bridwell himself, includes Mat Brooke on second guitar, Chris Early on bass, and Tim Meinig on drums — simple to the indiest.

Although the band was formally inaugurated in Seattle, Bridwell himself is an obstinate Caroli­ner, and one could expect the final result to sound like a synthesis of Piedmont blues with grunge — which, come to think of it, could be fun. In all actuality, the music sounds more like a synthesis of... umm, let's say James Taylor, Brian Wilson, U2, and Wayne Coyne's Flaming Lips. In other words, baroque arena-roots-rock with a decidedly modernistic sensibility. Get that?

Let us begin with what prevents Band of Horses from greatness. First, a common thing with the indie crowd — instrumental-wise, the playing throughout is «accomplished», nothing more. Ap­parently, Bridwell was learning to play guitar at the same time as he was assembling the band, and although he did an impressive job in such a brief period, the man is certainly not the one to be revolutionizing this, or any other, instrument any time soon. For that matter, the most professio­nal playing on the entire album comes from... the drummer, and even that may be just an illusio­nary effect of his trying out more stylistic variety than the others.

Second, all of the vocals are recorded with a faraway echo effect. Now this may just be one of those Nashville-inflicted things — them country singers like you to picture them as the ride-out-of-the-sunset type — or it may be an artsy Bono-type thing — them arena-rockers like you to per­ceive them as the as the stroll-out-of-the-clouds type — but whatever be the true grounds behind this, it always creates at least a small wall of alienation between the artist and the listener, and what sort of artist (counting out Bono himself) should want to alienate his listeners on his very first album? Not a good move.

Third, they chose 'The Funeral' as the lead single, singing it on Letterman and then syndicating it to something like a couple dozen movies and TV shows. Why? Just because it is the album's «gra­ndest» and most blatantly «tragic» song? Or because it was a subtle attempt to suck up to Ar­cade Fire's success with the same word two years before? Beware: if you happen to have heard the song and not liked it, having passed out a «too simple + too pretentious = generic indie crap» judgement, do not let it forever ruin your relationship with Band of Horses. There are much bet­ter songs on Everything All The Time than this so-so, in my opinion, attempt at self-aggrandizing at the expense of genuinely interesting ideas.

In Ben's place, I would rather bet it all on the aptly titled 'First Song' and its intricate wall of sound, constructed out of mostly trivial guitar jangle and slide runs, but in a way that spells «an­the­mic» without immediately reminding you of all the negative connotations of indie aesthetics. The «pop» and «roots» elements of the tune cleverly complement each other — the redneck and the hipster neutralize one another's yucky sides, and the result is quite refreshing.

The other songs are usually less well balanced, moving either too far in the pop-rock ('Wicked Gil') or in the country-rock ('Part One') department, but Bridwell has a good ear for hooks, and almost each song has something going for it either in the instrumental or in the vocal department. The thick guitar riff that opens 'The Great Salt Lake' almost promises a pop masterpiece — unfor­tunately, the song eventually transforms into 'The Funeral Part 2', i. e. a three-chord anthem, and is nearly ruined, but for about two minutes out of five it sparkles. As do 'Wicked Gil', 'Our Swords', and 'Weed Party'. The slow country waltzes and the James Taylor-ish 'St. Augustine' — not sure about these, but they do not offend or anything.

As long as you do not take the album's name too literally — let us assume that this is what they want to be eventually happening, in the process of gathering firewood for the machine to run — Everything All The Time is a fine enough record with a face of its own, even if that face is very trans­parently assembled from several mutilated face parts. But them horses have not yet been gi­ven a proper ride: it's a thumbs up all right — from behind the back.

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