An Evening with Band of Horses Celebrating 20 Years of Everything All the Time – this is the name of the tour that stopped at Poolen in Copenhagen on this last Tuesday of September.
20 years of Everything All the Time.
T-w-e-n-t-y-Y-e-a-r-s.
Let’s quickly look back at how life was twenty years ago: iPhones were not in our pockets, facebook was just opening up to non .edu accounts, there was no Spotify and music was discovered through radio singles, MySpace or by word of mouth.
And back then, for me, there was the Pacific Northwest, the underground clubs, the radio that was playing the classics of grunge and the new sound of that corner of the world, including our own Band of Horses here, who were debuting on Sub Pop records, in the shadow of the Space Needle.
So, how is this music, born in the wake of the new Seattle sound, standing the test of time?
The honest answer is: it’s doing great.
I don’t know if it’s me living in a non-linear timeline, where time is folding on itself and Everything All the Time still sounds fresh and interesting, or if it’s just made of the good stuff, the one that doesn’t get worn out by the repeated listenings.
It’s fair to say, that the crowd in front of the stage wasn’t exactly composed of young adults in their twenties, but the average age was shifted of the exact amount of years of this celebrated anniversary. This didn’t discourage the band to step on the stage with genuine energy and warmth towards the audience, although only Ben Bridwell represented the Band of Horses of back then.
As announced and obviously expected, we got Everything All the Time performed in its entirety, with the inversion of songs 2 and 3 of the tracklist. Not a deadly sin, I guess more a matter of having the chair in front of the pedal steel guitar moved around too much, but the first three songs were listened in great anticipation of what would have come, the Band of Horses song by definition, The Funeral. The notes of the intro vibrated through the still air above people heads, time curled up, it was so familiar and yet fresh. No one dared to mumble the words. The tenderness of the melody, the harshness of the lyrics and then the explosion of the chorus. Feelings slapped your face, memories, scenes of movies or TV series that needed that song as soundtrack; I’m pretty sure that if you were there, also your throat clogged a bit, because the magic of music was happening and it was taking you somewhere else, in space and time.
That’s the first peak of the album, the second being, for me, The Great Salt Lake. Both songs have this firework-y structure, soft-loud-soft, that at a bigger scale is also evident on the album itself. It starts quiet, it peaks and it returns quiet, especially when you listen to a solo rendition of St. Augustine, the closing lullaby track.
Intermission. A good 15 minutes to go and get a breath of fresh air, calm down after the rollercoaster of emotions and get ready for a retrospective of the rest of the band’s production.
With a limited number of slots in the setlist and vast repertoire of beautiful songs, the second part of the concert can be easily described as the best of the best of, starting off with Is There a Ghost.
As the song opens Cease to Begin, Band of Horses’ sophomore album, at first it might sound like yet another song from Everything All the Time, but it takes exactly one minute to scare the ghost of past albums and open for the electric guitars to storm in. That’s when the party really started, with the band jumping mid-air, spanning across the stage and the videos on the maxi screen setting a more colourful and vibrant mood for the rest of the evening.
The crowd was pleased, people were dancing, the religious silence that lingered over the venue during the first part of the set was broken and the party went full steam ahead.
While the hits from Cease to Begin and Infinite Arms almost monopolised the setlist, it’s worth to mention that we got a very pleasant and intriguing anticipation of what could come next: Little Suspect, a song that doesn’t belong to any album yet but that stood out to my ears at once.
We’re brought back on track and down memory lane with Laredo, to then continue with another favorite of mine, No One’s Gonna Love You, the slow ballad that prepares us for the last stretch of the concert.
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands is dreamy and hypnotic, with a video that gives you the feeling of falling and floating at the same time, exactly how our soothed souls feel; Ode to LRC is another oldie but goldie and then it’s time for The General Specific and its tambourines to close a very well curated concert, that kept the energy up and left an adoring crowd with the feeling of not having had enough.
Until next time then, may it be another anniversary of new music.
