15 October, 2007

The Post Where I Address my Fear of Horses

Anyone who lives a musical life will come across an album or a band that they dislike. That feeling of disconnection - complete polar opposition to a certain sound - is not novel for music lovers. Sometimes this band opens at a local venue and you find yourself yawning through their set, sometimes their music is played every hour on your local radio station, and sometimes this band happens to be the "it" band of the week (or month, or year) and you can't seem to extricate yourself from their sound.

I found myself in such a situation recently with the band called Band of Horses. Sounds benign, right? Lots of neighing, with the smell of leather polish and oats coming to mind. Wrong, actually, and my absolute polar opposition to their first album (Everything All The Time) could not be explained away by my irrational fear of horses. I really just didn't like the music: from the floating gothic romance of "The Funeral" to the wide open spaces feel and cliffhanger ending of "I Go To The Barn Because I Like the", I couldn't find anything fun or new. It sounded to me like these guys were trying to be so cool, and failing miserably. Except that they weren't failing at all. Every time I opened a magazine, the cover of Everything All The Time with it's palindromic, haunting trees was staring out at me. Let me tell you, if trees really could stare, no one would fall asleep. To get back to my point though, I can't really explain why I disliked their music, except that it seemed built upon a foundation of alternative music pretensions. So I ignored the airplay and the chatter from fellow music geeks, and went off to listen to my Rush alone.

A few weeks ago, I woke up in the early morning to hear this anthemic rock song with intense lyrics. It was one of those musical moments where you fall in love with a sound, because it captures a feeling. Any insomniac will tell you that when the sun falls away and leaves the dark there is nothing keeping away the demons, the ghosts of choices and actions that can haunt you through the night, and this song with it's three repeating lines captured all the feelings of a restless night. I sat awake listening through the dark for the name of the band, the name of the song, and then I hear a husky, tired, third-shift voice whisper "Is There A Ghost" by Band of Horses. My nemesis band, whose first album stalked me on my musical travels had created a song that completely captivated me. Not to imply that the rest of their new album Cease to Begin is my new favorite CD of the year. Actually, the rest of the album is a little too reminiscent of The Shins for my tastes; but, that first song is something altogether new and beautiful.

No comments: