Band of Horses - Cease to begin

The Band of Horses' first album was pretty good by most standards. The sog "Great Salt Lake" was a crystalline blue hint of wonders still to come. But their second, "Cease to Begin", has a purity and clean wonder that is very rare indeed, and achieves that rarest of achievements: a second album finer
than the first.

The voice of Ben Bridwell is a lovely, simple, almost childlike tone, yet he has a facility to find delicious simple melodies that make the most of it as an instrument.

I read an interview with Baaba Maal recently where he remarked on the art of finding a melody that sat above the hypnotic guitar patterns of his friend, and I think Ben has that same facility.

The songs are staple, sub-pop indie, mostly, but there's a, freshness, almost innocence about them that place them well away from the grungier end of the label.

I just can't decide which is the loveliest song...

East of Eden - Mercator Projected

Some records seem to come from nowhere.

I remember "jig a jig" in the charts. An Irish jig, seemed harmless enough. Nobody minded Folk music in those days. In the charts was fine. You could do medieval music if you wanted. But Mercator was an album that broke even the farthest barriers of the early 1970's

This was a right mix. Turkish and Hungarian dances, Bartok, vertiginous electric violin, flute, recorders, sax.... not ordinary sax mind, but amazing driving sax, with a hard AND soft rock band at the centre.

"Isadora" is a wonderful mix of all these. Tracks veer from muscular rock (Centaur Woman) to acid folk (Waterways)... but there are moments of real beauty, and once you get the whole Mercator feeling they all meld into a lovely stew.

A final note, Snafu is harder, faster, and more fun. It's a great romp and less pomposity, but also proportionately less beauty too. This one is a better album, I feel, though the first might have been a truer reflection of what they sounded like live, in their pomp.