Band of Horses, Cease to Begin

Between their last record and their new one, co-songwriter Mat Brooke left Band of Horses. This left guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell with the challenge of continuing the band on his own. On their new record, Cease to Begin, the overall sound of the band hasn’t changed — there’s still lots of heavy reverb, and the vocals are still front and center. The biggest difference is that there’s less of a variety of songs than there was on Everything All The Time.

The best song on the record is “Marry Song,” which is a countrified hymn with beautiful Band-style harmonies. The melody is set off by a simple electric piano part and drums, providing just enough to buoy the song. Bridwell’s voice works better on this song than on the others — the reverbed vocals and anthemic quality of the melody complements the spiritual quality of the melody. “The General Specific” is another good one, a ’60s-style song with more great harmonies, but it also sounds the least like the rest of the songs on the album, with the reverb turned down and a fun quality that’s absent from the rest.

The rest of the album, unfortunately, isn’t nearly as good. The other songs try too hard to be big anthems and fail, and they’re all the same kind of anthem, which makes the whole thing tedious. If there were less songs of that style, it might have made the remaining songs better — “Is There a Ghost,” for example, the first song on the album, is okay when you hear it alone, but after hearing the rest of songs, it becomes much more annoying, as well.

Bridwell is obviously trying to find a new path for Band of Horses after Brooke’s departure, and he’s found a couple of ideas that work. Unfortunately, far too many of these don’t. It’s too bad that the variety and casual inspiration of Everything All The Time has disappeared. It’s possible that with time, Ben may be able to be able to regain the facility and range of Brooke’s contributions, but right now he’s not able to go it alone.