Pros: Just beautiful. Fantastic tunes, superbly delivered.
Cons: Breezes by a little TOO quickly, if anything.
The Bottom Line: If the future of southern music involves any moment akin to the one in "Ode to LRC" where Bridwell chirps "the world is such a wonderful place!", sign me up.
Stairway2Drew's Full Review: Cease to Begin * by Band of Horses
Band of Horses are a straightforward bunch, in more ways than one. Their second set, Cease to Begin, comes complete with a cover that somehow illustrates exactly what one can expect to find inside; in many ways, the idea of this album as the perfect album to watch a glowing crescent moon dancing over the surface of the water makes a whole lot of sense. Then, there's the degree to which they wear their influences---the music press at large seems to agree that these guys are a whole lot of My Morning Jacket meets old-school Neil Young with the Shins and the Flaming Lips nipping at the heels, and far be it from me to try to refute this notion. And, of course, there's the music: lyrics that come across as simple without being dunderheaded, sentiments that ring loud and clear, tunes played with enough frills to keep interest but entirely without pretense. In many ways, Cease to Begin is the indie-rock album I always hoped I'd hear, plainspoken and atmospheric and heartfelt.
This doesn't really differ all that much from BoH's debut, Everything all the Time, except for I actually listen to Cease to Begin a hell of a lot more. With co-founder Mat Brooke out of the picture---he split after Everything and is preparing to release an album with the Grand Archives in 2008, which I've heard and is quite good---Ben Bridwell is left at the helm, and he more than adequately acquits himself, bringing an overwhelmingly beautiful sensibility to the proceedings, stripping away the jammier aspects of BoH circa 2006, trading them for stargazing ballads and back-porch shuffles. More importantly, his soaring tenor is the anchor of this incarnation of Band of Horses; whether cutting cleanly through the guitar shuffle and shimmer or atmospheric and shellacked in reverb, it's an instrument capable of delivering the most basic sentiments and allowing them to hit their mark, over and over, not like punches, but like waves lapping on the beach. Lines like "watch how you treat every living soul" and "the world is such a wonderful place!" (exclamation point mine, but heavily implied) avoid the broad posturing of dad-rock and just sound like simple truths, euphorically delivered.
The emphasis here is on the ballads this time around---"No One's Gonna Love You", with its heavily-reverbed guitars (the six strings here sound like twinkling stars, somehow, they really do) and its unabashed sentiment, is the love song of the year, perhaps song of the year, period, but "Detlef Schrempf" shimmers in a very similar manner, and the two tracks' side-by-side placement is perhaps the only moment of lax sequencing on the entire record. And when Band of Horses tip their collective hat to their southern heritage in the form of the slow-burn twang and country harmonizing of "Marry Song" and especially "the General Specific"---which is just unabashedly, retarded awesome---the rewards are tenfold. "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands" and "Is There a Ghost" traffic in a certain level of guitar bluster, for those looking for that sort of thing, but they also manage beauty---"Cigarettes" explodes into an immediate pop chorus and opener "Ghost" is a rickety stormer that manages to conjure in 3 minutes and barely a dozen words feelings of love and regret that entire albums by lesser bands have struggled to attain.
As Cease to Begin shuffles to its inevitable end-of-night close with the dusty "Window Blues"---positioned somewhere squarely between "No One's Gonna Love You"'s shimmering balladry and "Marry Song"'s down-home country---it's hard to escape the feeling that this is an experience that's gone by all too quickly. It's true: at 10 tracks (one of which is an instrumental) and about 35 minutes, Cease fades in and out. The impact, though, is lasting---these are just unbelievable songs, songs of particular beauty, dusty and mud-spackled, that stand proudly through their weed-addled haze. If the future of southern music involves any moment akin to the one in "Ode to LRC" where Bridwell chirps, enthusiastically, "the world is such a wonderful place!", and you totally believe that he means it, well, sign me up.
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