Band Of Horses
Band Of Horses are back with their latest album Mirage Rock, the follow up to the critically acclaimed Infinite Arms and the South Carolina group’s fourth collection of gorgeous tracks.
During their latest UK tour, we talked to the group’s lead singer Ben Bridwell about the new album’s sound, Europe’s obsession with beards and working with Glyn Johns.
So, for those people who haven’t heard Mirage Rock yet, what can they expect from the album?
Oh, let’s see. If they’re familiar with our other albums, I’d say this is a bit more of a testament to our live dynamic, more than just trying to perfect things in a studio. It’s a good snapshot of what we sound like live really, without trying to nit-pick on details and make everything perfect. It’s very shambolic at times and haphazard all the way through, but hopefully displays all of what Band Of Horses is with its melancholy bits and its rough and tumble bits.
So what got you guys working with Glyn Johns, a producer who’s worked with The Who and so many other rock and roll legends?
Well, the fact that he was interested was a huge part! We had spent the previous album maybe trying to over perfect things a bit and when Glyn’s name got brought up, it seemed like an obvious choice to take things in the other direction and do things so live. So it was to challenge ourselves and to switch up our process completely.
How do you stop yourself meddling with the sound then?
I think it’s still kind of a battle. You want to be precious with things and obviously make the songs be of the best performance possible, but understanding where Glyn comes from in the cannon of rock and roll and knowing that some of the best bits of rock and roll have been a bit loose and wild. You just have to not second guess yourself too much and embrace your frailties a bit more and hope that’s it for the better of the album instead of getting precious and over-perfect.
You’re last album, Infinite Arms, was so well received, netting you Grammy nomination along the way. Do you expect the same sort of reaction to Mirage Rock?
I’m expecting less, but you’re always hoping for more of that sort of thing. Critical success and some sort of pat on the back from the Grammy community. Honestly I thought this was a brave choice to go in this direction, in spite of the success of Infinite Arms, and all three records that proceeded this one. It seemed like a nasty little challenge really, in spite of everything that had gone well.
You’ve just been on Jools Holland again, what’s it like doing that sort of thing?
Well, we’ve done a lot of these kind of shows. We just did David Letterman for the fourth time and now we’re doing Jools for the third time and it’s easy when you start doing these shows to think that this is your big shot to really make a statement to people who haven’t really heard you. I have often found though that even when we’ve done the best performances, it doesn’t really shoot you into some new, huge, popular spectrum. When it’s gone bad it hasn’t sunk the ship completely. Have that information, knowing it’s not a make or break situation either way, we’re a lot more relaxed and just end up having fun with it instead of thinking it’s the be all and end all of our career. So now we just go and have fun and hopefully that energy transfers to TV more than some perfect performance.
You’ve performed with so many great acts over the years, but is there anyone else out there you’d love to work with?
Well, if the Rolling Stones need are reading this and need any support groups, we’re available! We’ve always held on to hope that The Faces would reform and we’d get a chance to sneak our place in there if they needed support. It’s the heroes of rock and roll really, the people who we grew up on with our parent’s record collection. It’s just one of those moments, when you feel it’s all worth it, when you get to play with your heroes. But there are also more contemporary bands like My Morning Jacket and hopefully even Biffy Clyro, guys our age that we look up to as well. I would love to work with those bands.
How has the tour been going this time around?
It’s been going really well. You put out a record and you hope it’s going to put you into this new successful level. We’ve never been that ambitious as a band, we’ve more than anything got this far by way of luck and hard work. But there is an ensuing disappointment that does come after you release an album, either with critics that don’t like it or get it or some bands that don’t get, it’s been a pleasure to put all that stuff to the back of your mind, not worry about it and embrace the live show as a chance to be legendary every day. You have a chance to do a fantastic job and transcend any bad reviews just with the unit that we are every day in a live setting. I believe that over the last few weeks, we’ve just been challenging ourselves, playing songs that are outside of our comfort zone, doing covers that we might fall flat on our face in front of people with to show them that we’re not afraid to make this a very personal experience every night. That’s a real exciting challenge for us and I think it really pays off with the crowd because you’re showing them that you’re not going to give them a canned performance. You’re really going to give them something that inspires or moves them.
So where did the inspiration behind ‘Dumpster World’ come from?
I had a day off in Leipzig in Germany, and I wrote the instrumental bits for it, even the A part that’s really smooth and the B part that’s really aggressive and I had it on the back burner for a long time. Then as I was finishing up some demos and doing stuff for the album and I found myself putting words to it. I sung over the parts with a whole bunch of garbage words, just to get a sense of the rhythm and the timing of the vocal. I think I might have originally said “I don’t care if we live in a dumpster girl”, y’know in a whole ‘It doesn’t matter where we are’ sort of way, so that’s when I got the idea to change it to ‘Dumpster World’ and then went into a really immature statement of my psyche being a mix between “Oh, everything is beautiful and the world is calm and serene” and the other side being like “I just want to destroy everything”. So, it was taking that and trying to make some feeble attempt at social commentary in the meantime was the gist then.
We’ve got to ask, but how much up-keep is the beard?
It’s funny, coming to Europe, it’s seems like I’ve been getting the beard questions more here than anywhere else. So I sabotaged the whole thing before I left and shaved the whole thing off and it’s really uncomfortable. It’s a whole thing, not letting people get comfortable with not only what we sound like but what we look like. So, to spite my face, I shaved it off.
So, finishing off, what have you got planned for the new year then?
Well, we have some cool stuff going on. We’re going to go to Australia and New Zealand. We’re doing the Big Day Out festival in Australia and then hitting a new territory in Wellington, we’ve never been there. Then we’re off to Singapore, we’ve never been there either and then we’re going to Japan. After that we’re going to be doing some more US stuff. We need to do a home town show; I swear we’ve played Scandinavia more than we’ve played there! So, try and plan out a mini festival in Charleston, South Carolina, which will take some work. Then, we’re planning on coming back to Europe for some summer festival stuff.
Band Of Horses’ latest album Mirage Rock is out right now and you can get it right here.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith