Achieving musical transcendence is a tricky feat, almost\ndefinitively. If it happens at all, it happens naturally — and\nperhaps nobody knows that better than Seattle, Washington’s Band of\nHorses. Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell and bassist Mat Brooke\nformed Band of Horses in 2004, after the dissolution of their\nnearly ten-year run in northwest melancholic darlings Carissa’s\nWierd. Carissa’s Wierd trafficked in sadly beautiful orchestral\npop, whose songs told unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss,\nleavened with defeatist humor. And, Band of Horses rises from the\nashes of that well-loved band. After playing music with each other\nfor over a decade, Bridwell and Brooke picked up together again\nwhen Bridwell began fleshing out his compositions post-Carissa’s.\n“It was really just a natural thing we started doing,” explains\nBridwell. Buoyed by Bridwell’s warm, reverb-heavy vocals (which\nstrangely channel a dichotomous blend of Wayne Coyne, Brian Wilson\nand Doug Martsch,) Band of Horses’ woodsy, dreamy songs ooze with\namorphous tension, longing and hope. At times raggedly epic (“The\nGreat Salt Lake”) and delicately pensive (“St. Augustine,”\n“Monsters”), Everything All the Time is an album painted gorgeously\nin fragile highs and lows.

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