Album title:
Cease To Begin
Artist:
Band of Horses
Label:
Sub Pop
Band of Horses' LP, Everything All the Time, was a collection of unusually lovely, brilliant songs and an understated highlight of 2006. On their sophomore album, Cease to Begin, not a massive amount has changed. Ben Bridwell still has an appetite for Jim James sized helpings of reverb and they still have a flair for penning likeable melodies; every track on show is pleasant and highly listenable… hardly surprising just one year on. What is worrying is that over the same timescale, they seem to have exhausted their supply of fresh ideas. Whereas Everything… was brimming with inspiration, Cease to Begin seems content to blend into the background. The album occasionally feels bare as a result, begging for a killer tune like Great Salt Lake or The Funeral to take it by the scruff of the neck. This would be a fine introduction, but given what came before, the oft overused and trite "difficult second album syndrome," fits like a glove. [Finbarr Bermingham]