Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
One of the most highly anticipated albums of the year, at least for Asheville, is set to be released May 18. That would be the Band of Horses new record, “Infinite Arms.”
You can listen to it for yourself here.
Here’s a sampling of reviews:
From consequenceofsound.net:
Infinite Arms surfaces in the same void between alt-country revival and mainstream crossover Band of Horses have been treading in since the beginning. Light, melodic, and loaded with fine tuned harmonies, there’s more twang and slides to string together key moments like “Older” and “One My Way Back Home”. The pace is set early and leads you to exactly what you would expect from the band.
The themes here are still the same, with songs that are abstractly personal, and romantically hopeful. Ben Bridwell’s voice makes anything he sings sound genuine, creating endearing moments that give the record life. For the pop song “Dilly”, they bring in the bar room keys, leading you from vocal hook to vocal hook. Bridwell flexes his folk muscle on “Evening Kitchen” sticking to a single guitar and simple harmonies that resonate. When together you get their classic country sound next to their pop-rock for a combination that creates a musical consistency you can lean on, but don’t expect too many surprises.
From the music review section of the BBC:
There’s something not quite as cutting about Infinite Arms as Band of Horses’ previous efforts, though. The overall tone is more the choral country of tracks like Cease to Begin’s Detlef Schrempf and of peers like Midlake and Fleet Foxes, rather than the sharp heights of Everything All the Time’s The Funeral and Cease to Begin’s Is There a Ghost? The title-track flirts with dreariness, as do lines as lines as lumpen as “the Midwestern sky is grey and cold”. We can forgive them that, though. Fans of the band, and those with a rustling liking for a certain kind of beard-here-now Americana, will devour this like a bottle of the Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler referenced on the last track.
From spin.com:
Three albums is all it takes these days to graduate from buzzy upstarts to grizzled veterans. Not long ago, Ben Bridwell’s reedy vocals and slow-burn guitar were compared to Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch; Bridwell himself is now a touch- stone. But when does “consistent” translate to “rut”? For Band of Horses, not yet. Still present, and lovely, are the lilting ballads (“Infinite Arms,” “Evening Kitchen,” “Older”), afternoon-delightful AM gold (“Blue Beard”), and keening boot-stompers (“Northwest Apartment”), all delivered with a back-porch abandon many beardos emulate, but few match.
