Band of HorsesYou often hear from established rock bands about the drudgery of being on tour and the pointless repetition of life on the road, but sometimes things can align pretty damn nicely, as happened to Band Of Horses recently in the midst of touring their new album Mirage Rock through the States.
“We're kind of on a couple of down days here in New York City,” enthuses frontman and chief songwriter Ben Bridwell from the Big Apple, “and we're going to see the Stones tonight – no Band Of Horses for us tonight, but that's alright by me. I'm really psyched – our manager actually bought us all tickets as a Christmas present so the whole band is going, we're really psyched.”
Fandom aside, it's been a few months now since Mirage Rock dropped, and the South Carolina-based quintet are so far stoked with how it's translating in the live realm.
“Yeah, very much so actually,” Bridwell offers. “We're even playing the weirdest ones on there – Heartbreak On The 101 and stuff like that – because we've tried to embrace playing everything. Actually here in New York we tried to play every single song from our recorded albums, so I feel like we've put them together in a way where it feels like a cohesive set, but I'm usually the last to know when something sucks. So it's hard to tell what most people think, but I'm enjoying playing them live.”
It was at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York where Band Of Horses tried the ambitious task of playing their four albums worth of recorded songs in one outing.
“Yeah, we did it the other night but it was funny because there was a set-list mishap where one of the songs didn't get copied, so just like everything in Band Of Horses' career we were one song short of greatness,” Bridwell laughs. “But we tried – we had an acoustic set and then we did two electric sets in the same building on the same day, and we planned for all of them at least.”
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Slight mishaps notwithstanding, such an experiment must have given the band (and fans) an interesting perspective on the evolution of their sound since forming in Seattle back in 2004.
“Absolutely!” Bridwell stresses. “There's two songs especially – two sacred cow songs that I had to slaughter – from the first album that one of the dudes who was in the band near the beginning, he co-wrote those if not wrote all of them [Mat Brooke co-writes I Go To The Barn Because I like The (sic) and St. Augustine from 2006 debut Everything All The Time], so I've shied away from those since he left the band in 2005, so I definitely hadn't played them in forever and it was definitely a good reminder of how long it's been and just the evolution of us as a band.”
The sound of Band Of Horses has changed substantially since they emerged fully-formed on Sub Pop, morphing substantially – especially when they joined the major label world for 2010 third album Infinite Arms – but Bridwell believes that the previously fluid line-up has settled now with positive results.
“Man, I think it's expanded greatly with the band all coming together and us finally reaching a solidified line-up now,” he muses. “It's been over five years with the same dudes, and that's been a huge help – at least for the live shows. So I think at least as far as playing live goes we've come light years from where we started. Who knows about the recorded stuff though; like I said before, I'm usually the last one to know when something sucks.”
Mirage Rock was recorded with the legendary English producer Glyn Johns (The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Band, The Who, Led Zeppelin) at the helm – after three consecutive albums with US indie stalwart Phil Ek – and Bridwell believes that Johns' very presence had a dramatic impact on the finished product.
“Well there was a ton of songs to choose from – I think altogether we had over fifty – so we weren't quite sure what the album would sound like, although everyone had their own ideas thrown into the mix,” he recalls. “But once we signed up with Glyn Johns to produce – and knowing his track record and his pedigree – it just made sense to go in a more rock and roll direction, in a way to show off to him that we could do that kind of stylistic stuff. But we gave some of the material to him – where we thought his wheelhouse would be – while also stretching out a bit and doing some of the textures that I guess we're known for from the previous albums.
“It was done completely live and completely analogue, to where even every mix was a performance by Glyn because he didn't automate the board or anything, so it was about as prehistoric as you could get. It was a really cool change of pace after last time – we got so hands on with the production ourselves and using the edit button and the benefits of technology – but with this one it was cool because we took out all that second guessing and just had fun with it, even if you feel like you're sneaking one past the goalie because it's a lot easier to record this way.”
Was any of this a reaction to the critical reception afforded Infinite Arms, whose relatively slick veneer proved a bit distasteful to many people who had been with the band from the outset?
“Yeah, I at least over-thought and maybe overcooked some of those – I just got way too hands on with the final mixing and stuff like that – so I could see where that was probably a bit off-putting to some people, so I did want to go back to a more bare bones approach just to have a different challenge,” Bridwell concedes. “But not to please anyone per se, because I do feel that this album is still challenging enough in its own right – enough to not be the easy way out, that's for sure.
“Some of it was quite tough, singing live especially was something that I'd never done on an album – where I've got to play guitar and sing at the same time – that's a bit nerve-wracking. Luckily, like I said before, we've really come together over the last five years with the line-up, and those guys know my tendencies of how I sing so we got to do a lot of the harmonies live together and they know how to fill out the sound to where it's pleasing and at least as good as my original demo was. I guess we're well-oiled now or somethin'.
“As far as the material chosen there wasn't a common theme, unless it was trying somewhat to pander to Glyn's tastes. The process has a common theme obviously, because we didn't really stray from that mode of recording, and I guess there's that loose vibe of it all – if there's any one recurring theme throughout the whole album it's just that it's very haphazard and loose.”
The original batch of songs must have been pretty strong, because deluxe versions of the album came with an extra EP, Sonic Ranch Sessions, which include five strong songs (including the track Mirage Rock itself) which didn't make the cut.
“You know it's funny man, because I'll still second guess myself to this day wondering if I chose the right stuff,” Bridwell ponders. “There was so much stuff in there, and a lot of it maybe leaned more towards the indie rock stylings. It's hard for me to over tell what's good and bad when I do something – I feel like there was three decent albums in there, I think at least over fifty percent were keepers.”
You'd imagine someone like Bridwell wouldn't lose too much sleep over how his band is pigeonholed, but given that he brought genre into the discussion, where exactly does he thinks Band Of Horses sits in the overall scheme of things?
“Oh man, that's a funny question and I do think about it because doing so many interviews over the years and stuff – especially all over the world – it's sometimes hard to translate how you see yourself, and people are going to choose what they want for the most part usually anyway,” he laughs. “So that's when I wrote the song Mirage Rock, basically naming the song after what I thought our genre was – 'mirage rock'. Over here [in the States] we say mirage so that it rhymes with garage, so it's meant to be a bit of a pisstake on garage rock, but also meaning lacking substance.
“It's basically because I was writing a bunch of these songs in an actual garage – with actual real working male humans on either side of me, doing real man work like welding and shit – and I'm in there complaining politely into this microphone so they won't hear me, but wondering if during the playbacks what if someone out there might put their ear to the wall and think, 'What is that? It sounds really interesting', and then they'd actually open up the door and listen to it and go, 'Oh shit, there's nothing there'. It's a pretty apt label really.”
Band of Horses will be playing the following dates:
Friday 18 January - Big Day Out, Sydney NSW
Sunday 20 January - Big Day Out, Gold Coast QLD
Wednesday 23 January - Palais Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Friday 25 January - Big Day Out, Adelaide SA
Saturday 26 January - Big Day Out, Melbourne VIC
Monday 28 January - Big Day Out, Claremont WA
