Band of Horses – Perennial favorites of indie rock music

Perennial Seattle indie rock music favorites, the Band of Horses, will headline the concert at the new Fox Theater in Pomona, CA on August 29, 2009. As of this writing, tickets are on sale now. This is after having been to Helsinki, Finland to headline for club Tavastia earlier that month (August 18). This will be the band’s last stop on their Scandinavian tour that will see them at the Oya Festival in Oslo, the Way Out West Festival in Gothenburg and the Beatday Festival in Copenhagen.

Band of Horses burst onto the rock music scene in 2006 and immediately began drawing critical parallels between themselves and early Neil Young (Crazy Horse… Band of Horses… it fit). Mat Brooke promptly left the band he had founded, leaving former Carissa’s Weird bassist (the dead band Horses rose from as Phoenix) Ben Bridwell was left as Horses’ bandleader. This seems to have taken care of one of the big criticisms of Band of Horses: youthfulness. Not that Brooke was necessarily more immature than any of the other youngsters in the band, but since he dominated, perhaps no one else had enough input. This is no longer the case, and Band of Horses definitely showed some signs of maturity on their follow up album “Cease to Begin”.

The second album doesn’t feature the light-hearted romp into madness about the beautiful moment one smokes pot with a song like “Weed Party” from the first album. But there’s a lazy rock song named after the German version of basketball legend Larry Bird called “Detlef Schrempf,” a guy who never rose to fame (although no one really knows what Bridwell’s lyrics are about). But there are also a lot of good, more mature moments on the album. “The General Specific” is an artfully simple and catchy pop-rock song with a hint of philosophy; “Lamb on the Lam” is a very well done instrumental piece; and “Marry Song” shows some southern rock experimentation. “Is there a ghost?” opens the album and has become a favorite of Horses fans, with its eighth-note clean-tone electric guitar strumming and reverb-saturated vocals.

Much of the material from the band’s first album is still beloved by fans and if you go to see them play live you can be sure you’ll hear a lot of it. “First Song” and “Wicked Gil” aren’t going off the set list anytime soon. I also can’t imagine a Band of Horses show without them doing “The Great Salt Lake.” That’s a song that connects these indie rockers to the classic rockers like Crazy Horse and The Band that have clearly made a huge impact on them.

So if you’re looking to rock this summer (and in the future) and you’ll be in their area, get out of the house and catch those horses. You will not regret.