Carissa's Wierd - Band Of Horses - The whisper of hidden Seattle

This is the chronicle of the merciless dissolution of a band that managed to capture the discontent of a generation, yet never got the chance to win it over, ignored as they were by the major record labels. At the end of a career that lasted only eight years, Carissa's Wierd vanished into thin air, without a single label of any real standing ever taking notice of them, leaving behind a small but devoted following disappointed. Theirs is a story that stands as a paradigm of how, despite talent and dedication, and despite the buzz growing louder around you, you can still remain eternal nearly-rans, inexplicably crushed by a series of missed coincidences.

And yet their subterranean lament - melancholy and evocative, but also powerful and visceral - represents the fertile depths from which the band's members were able to blossom anew into new musical ventures. It's no coincidence that this long experience gave rise to the compelling vitality of Band Of Horses, the group that, more than any other, managed to reap (with interest) the rewards of a unique gift for crafting songs that strike straight at the heart. And they weren't the only offshoot to break away from the original band: only now can we truly appreciate how Carissa's Wierd brought together such a rare convergence of talents. Grand Archives, but also Sera Cahoone herself, in her solo project of the same name, still interpret with the utmost precision the tenets of that country-folk revival that has become a cornerstone of the American music scene in recent years. Nor should we forget Jenn Ghetto, one of the founders of Carissa's Wierd, who still carries on along her own thoroughly personal path, with admirable, tireless devotion.

CARISSA'S WIERD

It's worth starting from the beginning, which takes place in Seattle in 1995: a simple game of free association brings to mind scenarios quite different from those evoked by Carissa's Wierd. A possible explanation may lie in the origins of its founders, Mat Brooke and Jenn Ghetto, who came from that silent, desolate Arizona where the echoes of the musical upheavals taking place in the Pacific Northwest inevitably arrived muffled. They had just moved to Seattle when they founded Carissa's Wierd, initially a guitar-and-voice duo. "Carissa's Oddity" is one possible translation, unless the bizarre and grotesquely mis-spelled "weird" rendered as "wierd" (perhaps dialectal, or emphasizing a particularly colorful pronunciation) is to be taken literally: an enigma, in short, that carries both self-deprecating humor and an intimacy with a character who might have stepped out of some village swept by desert wind.

The band's lineup would later expand with the addition of Sarah Standard on violin and Jeff Hellis on piano, while the rhythm section was covered alternately by the aforementioned Sera Cahoone and Ben Bridwell, who would go on to found Band Of Horses together with Brooke and become its frontman.

"Ugly But Honest": the first steps in the shadows, before stepping into the new millennium

The Seattle band's first work, Ugly But Honest: 1996-1999, is pretty well summed up by its own title. Or rather, it tries to be: it tries to pass off as "ugliness" a stripped-down approach that makes everything sound very simple, when in truth it isn't. Ugly But Honest does indeed sound "honest," for better or worse, but not as a deliberate stylistic choice - rather, out of a more prosaic lack of means.

Produced by Bridwell's own label, Brown Records, the debut album already contains all the characteristic elements of Carissa's Wierd's music, as well as some of their most memorable songs. Among these is the elaborate construction of "Drunk With The Only Saints I Know," which attests to rather inspired songwriting, as does the penetrating acoustic riff of "Florescent Lights".

Often labeled as part of the slo-core movement, Carissa's Wierd do indeed come close to its more "gut-level" strain, one shot through with country inflections, best exemplified by Sophia. As with the latter, the shadow of Morrissey looms over their discography, bringing with it his aching, melancholy intensity (worth noting in this context is their cover of "Suedehead").

What stands out above all is the vocal interplay and alternation between Mat's impalpable, monotone whisper and Jenn's more emotional voice, in a version more dissonant and anguished than what one finds in Low ("Some Days Are Better Than Other Ones").

Scattered throughout Ugly But Honest are also the ingredients of what would become the band's recipe in the years to come, one that would survive even after the breakup in various projects, particularly those of Mat Brooke. The opening track ("Heather Rhodes") alone is enough to identify one such element, with its arpeggio that struggles to conceal the chord change simmering beneath the surface, which finally emerges in the vibrant coda of "One Night Stand".

What sets Carissa's Wierd apart is their ability to infuse not just warmth and emotional transport but also a certain dynamism, even within an extremely stripped-down formula, sometimes limited to just guitar and voice ("Heather Rhodes", "Bathtile Green"). Buoyed by the rhythm section and the violin (or piano), the band's compositions fill with light, hinting at orchestral breadth without ever fully spelling it out.

The narrative effort found in Ugly But Honest somehow mirrors the unadorned spirit of the record: before any striving for aesthetic polish, before any search for a personal language, comes the immediacy of telling one's own stories. These inevitably unfold around intimate episodes, small-scale sentimental dramas that, however valid and relatable, carry the flavor of "ugly but honest." Even within this atmosphere of bleak, bitter reflection on the difficulty of building stable relationships ("A Bathtile Green"), and the by-now well-worn but unavoidable brooding over incommunicability ("Florescent Lights"), it's the musical fabric that offers a balm able to overcome, through shared experience, an otherwise unresolvable introspection.

The drive of a new decade, between renewed hopes and renewed attention

2001 is the year Carissa's Wierd set themselves up to make the leap that might pull them out of the half-empty small-town venues where they were used to playing. You Should Be At Home Here can be considered their first true studio album in every sense, not just for the refinement of the sound, now "professional", but also for the stylistic consistency of its content. And it's undeniable that the results, built on a palpable chemistry within the band, are already striking.

Where Ugly But Honest came across (though not always) as modest and "raw", You Should Be At Home Here is majestic and imposing. A beautifully crafted instrumental blend, both in composition and performance, accompanies Mat Brooke, now the lead singer, with Ghetto relegated to backing vocals, in marching processions that rise like a tide, until spilling over into militaristic finales. That's how the record opens, with the emotional climax of "Brooke Daniels' Tiny Broken Finger", its stormy coda lingering in the air.

A perfect introduction to "The Color That Your Eyes Changed With The Color Of Your Hair", the song in which the emotional involvement, combined with a certain theatricality that seems to be the hallmark of You Should Be At Home Here, most likely reaches the highest peak of Carissa's Wierd's career. The seductive three-quarter sway, the admirable violin and accordion arrangement, the elaborate electroacoustic arpeggio in the background, Mat's pained delivery of one of his unlucky romantic tales — everything contributes to building something epic, unfortunately gone largely unnoticed.

The attention, however deserved, paid to this one song shouldn't make us forget that You Should Be At Home Here is an album that flows languid and brooding, yes, but also carefree and playful throughout its runtime. That toy skeleton standing out on the cover, alone and defenseless, raising its hands as if in surrender, sums up Carissa's Wierd's music in an emblematic way, so much so that it will reappear, more or less hidden, on other records by the band. A piece of symbolism that, at the same time, carries a childlike playfulness, much like the laughter that opens the colorful, lively "A Loose Hair Falls Into A Glass Of Water Without Ice".

In the same vein, it's this highly vital approach to subjects and narratives forever teetering on the edge that keeps You Should Be At Home Here from ever feeling heavy, while remaining intense throughout. The alt-rock fervor of "Blessed Arms That Hold You Tight, Freezing Cold And Alone" and "All Apologies And Smiles, Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine" plays its part here, reaching places the band's songwriting (whether credited to Brooke or Ghetto), at times too navel-gazing and syrupy, couldn't reach on its own.

Also crucial is the contribution of Sarah Standard's violin, an instrument whose emotional weight is a constant thread throughout the record, without ever becoming overbearing or excessive: witness its penetrating, star turn on "The Ghost Of A Dead Hummingbird Flying Around The Room".

You Should Be At Home Here, with its handful of songs bearing long, bizarre titles, would take the band on a successful tour, albeit one still confined to lower-profile venues and not yet reaching beyond the region. Still, their name was starting to resonate across the Pacific Northwest, and word was going around that they were on the verge of being signed by a label.

Who knows — maybe their name never reached the right ears, maybe no one working at a record label was ever at one of their packed shows, but the fact remains that You Should Be At Home Here only made it onto compact disc once Sonic Boom (the Seattle label behind Death Cab For Cutie and Nada Surf) put up a little money to press a handful of copies.

Note: in a recent interview, Mat Brooke confessed to us that part of the blame for this "missed leap" lies with Carissa's Wierd themselves, with their youthful pride, which kept them from compromising at that stage of their career.

And so, riding this encouraging but short-lived wave of success, the year passed and Carissa's Wierd began recording a new album: Songs About Leaving. The band's growing standing in the indie world was confirmed not only by the label change, which gave them nationwide distribution through Sad Robot, but also, and above all, by production duties being handed to Chris Walla, guitarist of Death Cab For Cutie. Add to that Sam Beam's appearance in the credits, and you have the profile of a band poised for a breakthrough.

Of course, the label, even though it was the first time anyone outside the band had financed them, was still a Seattle outfit: a significant step, but not yet a sensational one. Songs About Leaving is, in practice, basically the only record that's physically findable today, yet it still remains something of a rarity, which speaks to a less-than-ideal distribution. The fact was, rather, that Carissa's Wierd now had an absolutely top-tier album on their hands.

Songs About Leaving effectively sums up their previous experiences, namely the "open-hearted" broodings of Ugly But Honest and the youthful verve of You Should Be At Home Here. At the same time, on this record Carissa's Wierd arrive at an elegance and formal composure that was probably unheard of for them until then. Combine that with their usual knack for emotionally drawing in the listener, and you get a record that can comfortably be counted among the hidden masterpieces of the past decade.

The opening of "You Should Be Hated Here" already stands as a significant emblem, with its hushed duet between Mat and Jenn building in intensity through a progression that grabs you by the throat. This same track would later resurface on a single put out by SubPop, an impromptu attempt to resurrect the band from their limbo of indifference, sadly in part self-inflicted. The band never loses control of the helm even at the most emotionally charged moment, that "Ignorant Piece Of Shit" which stands as one of the group's most representative songs, a viscerally captivating swirl driven by a vibrant guitar arpeggio and an insistent violin accompaniment.

Songs About Leaving is an album in which Carissa's Wierd display a clear confidence in their own abilities, allowing themselves extended piano and instrumental excursions ("The Piano Song", "They'll Only Miss You When You Leave", "Slow Motion Soundtrack Song From The Leaving Scene"), sketching out autumnal scenes of palpable heartache.

As already mentioned, this record achieves a successful fusion between the intimacy of a rawer Ugly But Honest ("So You Want To Be A Superhero", "A New Holiday (16th November)") and the leaden intensity of You Should Be At Home Here ("Farewell To All Those Rotten Teeth", "They'll Only Miss You When You Leave"). It's the renewed chemistry between Brooke (truly the band's driving force on the melodic and compositional side) and Ghetto (who features here more prominently with her spare ballads, entirely functional to the record's fabric) that makes Songs About Leaving the most accomplished work of their career: compact and delicate at once, tremendously penetrating.

"Ghost Fireworks": a slow fade-out

It isn't easy, nor particularly interesting, to pin down the reasons or circumstances that led to the band's breakup, which came at the end of 2003 following a tour across the United States. It certainly wasn't disillusionment, or not only that, since, as already noted, almost all the band members went on with their careers as musicians.

Far more worthy of attention are the group's final releases. It is, in fact, to a live album that Carissa's Wierd entrust their swan song. Not merely a collection of live recordings, in fact: I Before E opens with three unreleased tracks, recorded in the studio. It's as if the band wanted to bid farewell to their fans with a pointed epitaph aimed at the music world's ostracism: the opening trio of songs outlines a band still fully capable of inspired songwriting, even showing itself more lively and engaging than before.

In particular "Die", with its nervous piano figure, the airiness of violin and guitar arpeggio, and the intense duet between Mat and Jenn, seems like a perfect synthesis of Carissa's journey: of their intoxicating blend of harsh introspection ("I want to die/ I never asked to be here") and unstoppable vitality, expressed in the bursts of the instrumental break.

One then plunges into a nostalgic retrospective that is only nominally complete, since, although every album of Carissa's career is represented, what prevails (somewhat surprisingly) are tracks from Ugly But Honest, the record the band probably held dearest when putting this collection together. Standing out is the reworking of "A Bathtile Green", here enriched with electroacoustic touches and Standard's violin, as if to do justice to their early material, presenting it in a more refined and even more penetrating guise. Echoing this are a chilling "One Night Stand" and "Florescent Lights" (among the band's signature songs), in which every moment seems to carve out indelible emotional grooves.

It is this indefinable urgency that pervades I Before E, a record marked by an incredibly vital sonic struggle, a genuine flood in which the band lets itself go, truly giving the impression of pouring everything into it, surpassing in sheer force their own studio recordings.

It is in this spirit of special distinction that we arrive at the final track, the one with which Carissa's Wierd bid farewell to their audience: an "Ignorant Piece Of Shit" of stunning intensity, in which Mat Brooke's duet partner is no longer Jenn Ghetto. In a kind of premonition, or clue, it's Ben Bridwell who intertwines with the Carissa's frontman.

Also not to be overlooked is the "little notebook", the collection of so-called scribbles that the band handed out during their final tour. Scrapbook is indeed a compendium of b-sides, covers, leftovers, in short, but it doesn't only offer more of the same (the first four tracks especially): it also reveals intriguing forays into American roots music, as in the touching tribute to Rutili (Red Red Meat, Califone) found in "Gauze".

What's more, as is to be expected from releases of this kind, there are also off-the-cuff experiments like the lo-fi electronics of "Isolation" (featured, among other things, in the remixes of "Sympathy Bush" and "Heather Rhodes"), a solo outing by Ghetto that, together with "Asleep", hints at a songwriting voice still evolving.

With Carissa's Wierd disbanded, what remains of them? A small, tightly localized cluster of fans, niche releases that are nearly impossible to track down in physical form, more or less fragmented accounts of their career: this would seem to be the story of a deserving yet fleeting shooting star. And yet, the news (which we received in an "exclusive preview" straight from Mat Brooke's own mouth) of an upcoming grand reissue of their material, complete with a celebratory "Greatest Hits", as befits a band with such an illustrious past, turned out to be rather surprising: a bit of everyone's dream, seeing your favorite band finally get its due. Even though we secretly thought we liked them better this way, abandoned, afflicted with ugly-duckling syndrome.

Thanks to the initiative of Sub Pop, carried out through its subsidiary Hardly Art (even though the label's official website insists on indicating the opposite relationship of dependency), Carissa's Wierd will also reunite in Seattle for one last get-together. We'd love to be there with them, to let them know they're still alive; and that they will be for quite a while yet.

Then again…

There will be no tragedies

from “Heather Rhodes” (Ugly But Honest)

BAND OF HORSES

The next venture, undertaken by Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke, might come as something of a surprise given how far it strays from what Carissa's Wierd expressed in their work. The unlikely duo's arrival in the world of American alt-rock, in its most muscular form – the one that owes so much to Neil Young (My Morning Jacket, Built To Spill, to name a couple) – can actually be seen as a kind of liberating breakthrough from the sometimes claustrophobic feel of their previous band, a feeling of euphoric fury that bursts forth from the music of Band Of Horses.

The band's trademark sound (the one thing about them worth remembering, if nothing else) has by now become an essential reference point for pop-rock in this still-young century: those relentless, crashing guitar surges, ridden by the steady, crystalline voice of singer Ben Bridwell, make for anthems that are hard to scrub off your skin.

Such vigour that it seems almost pre-civilized, an indivisible magmatic jet rising from the depths of the planet. The natural imagery that seems to be an obsession for the band – starting not only with the name but also the visual “trappings” (the booklet of their Cease To Begin actually features a photo shoot of Bridwell in a South Carolina nature park) – couldn't be more fitting: a nature not transfigured by artfully constructed quirks, not filtered through poses or affectations, but described in a pre-rational way, with movements of unstoppable yet spontaneous power.

This is how songs of immediate, irresistible appeal take shape – songs that, like only certain natural landscapes can, speak to the human soul in the most direct way possible.

“Everything, all the time”: a self-sufficient work

In every occasion I’ll be ready/For the funeral.

“The Funeral”, Band Of Horses

It's impossible to begin any account of Everything All The Time without starting from its cornerstone, rightly one of the best-known songs of the last decade: “The Funeral”. A fairly enigmatic lyric: whose funeral is it that Bridwell sings about? Likely a figure for the end of a love affair, or an oblique biblical reference (being ready for the call) that turns into a hymn to carpe diem…

We're talking, perhaps, about one of the few songs that stand out, amid the indecipherable chaos of recent years, as something that comes close to touching the idea of being “generational”.

The song's epic guitar charge (heavily influenced by Mat Brooke's style, whose absence, as we'll see, would cast a heavy silence over the band's later work) is introduced by a “calm before the storm” arpeggio and is by now etched in many people's memories. It's hard not to be won over by the progression that leads from Ben's confession (“I’m coming up only to hold you under/I’m coming up only to show you wrong”) to the cathartic release of the chorus.

Moving past this necessary introduction, Everything All The Time is a record of tremendous impact, lean and powerful in its muscle, fiery in its gaze, sleek and gleaming in its coat. It might be an easy trick to describe the album through equine metaphors, but it really is an explosion of life – understood as a natural force, an interplay of atmospheric elements and organic masses – that flows through the record's notes, intoxicating swells that fill your lungs.

Just listen to the joyful romp of “The Great Salt Lake”, so steeped in yankee vitality, in the breath of wide open spaces, in the innocent hope of a young and strong nation. And who else could pull off an “Yee-pah!” to kick off a song (“The Weed Party”) and still sound convincing? Bridwell and Brooke thus seem to forcefully shake off the baggage of emotions just outlined, the (albeit partial) emotional restraint and contrition known from Carissa's Wierd, pouring an instinctive, primal urgency into the crystalline melodies composed by Bridwell.

Highly significant in this sense is the opening track, entrusted to "The First Song", a tautology that actually aims higher: it aims to become a veritable manifesto of the band's music, gushing forth unperturbed, inscrutable and pure.

"Everything All The Time", that seems the most plausible translation of a title that hints at something totalizing, all-encompassing, a world unto itself with simple, immediate rules. Not a single song would escape a meticulous entomological classification, in the elementary opposition between ballads where the partnership between Ben and Mat becomes most evident (transfiguring Carissa's Wierd's themes into something consolatory) and outbursts of youthful power that are never merely juvenile ("Wicked Gil" and "Weed Party" in particular).

It's probably in the first of these two realms that the most important discoveries occur: both "I Go To The Barn Because I Like The" and "Monsters" surprise with their emotional climax, with the unstoppable blossoming of emotions in which Brooke's steady strumming (and more) plays a key role. A guitar-driven songwriting that reaches its peak in the finale of "St. Augustine", where Brooke masterfully frames the romantic duet with Bridwell, who draws on the full extent of his songwriting abilities, carving out a sketch that could serve as an "emotional standard" for other artists typically credited with the utmost expressive depth as songwriters.

This time Mat and Ben find themselves swept up in a genuine flood. Everything All The Time lands on Pitchfork's Best New Music list; the band gets the chance to perform its lead single, "The Funeral", on David Letterman's Late Show; and their sold-out gig at New York's Bowery Ballroom is filmed by an MTV crew.

Through all of this, Mat Brooke will remain merely a spectator: he will never appear onstage alongside Ben, and on 25 July 2006 he leaves Band Of Horses due to unspecified conflicts and incompatibilities. No small number of shadows gather, at that point, over the band's career, which thus faces a second effort that's even tougher than usual, without its load-bearing pillar.Brought in to replace Brooke is Tyler Ramsey, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter himself drawn to 90s slo-core influences, as well as more roots-oriented sounds, romantic country sketches with elegant contours but, in truth, very little personality. And so it is that an ideal substitute for Mat, on paper, turns out to be a replacement of little added value.

Thus ends the partnership of a duo with Steinbeckian overtones, the composed, reflective Mat paired with Ben's exuberance and impulsiveness. Digging through the web, though, it's worth unearthing the words Brooke spent on his bandmate at the very start of the Band Of Horses venture, words of indescribable tenderness (considering that Mat himself taught Ben to play, first drums and then guitar, with the patience of a Jedi master).

Mistaking an "ending" for a "beginning": a return, for better or worse, hasty and unreflective

While acknowledging Brooke's significant influence on the composition and sound of the first record, Bridwell states in several interviews that he wrote Cease To Begin without feeling any pressure; indeed, with the explicit intention of not "breaking his back and worrying too much". Turning the evocative primitivism of Everything All The Time into plain immediacy does indeed seem to be one of the album's watchwords, right from the opening "Is There A Ghost?", a couple-of-chords ditty in which the hand of producer Phil Ek (at that time known for his work with the Shins) is felt heavily.

Even so, Cease To Begin is a thoroughly enjoyable album, with a grandiose sound that's compelling in its own way on the more assertive tracks, thanks to Bridwell's overflowing vocal gifts (see "Marry Song"), and languidly romantic in the central trio of big ballads; sure, with a flavor that's as crowd-pleasing as it gets, almost TV-ready, but effective in delivering romantic flutters steeped in innocent shyness ("No One's Gonna Love You", "Detlef Schrempf", "The General Specific"). In this last case the band oddly repeats itself, piling on the sweetness of the trio until it ultimately proves a touch hard to digest, even though Bridwell manages to send more than a few shivers down the spine with his vocal flights.

Band Of Horses, however, leaves itself open to criticism on more than one occasion, as in the bland festiveness of "Lamb Of The Lam (In The City)" and the baffling nocturnal glow of "Islands On The Coast", only to then launch into a majestic closing stretch, propelled by the swells of "Marry Song" and "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands".

These angry, minor-key gusts probably make up the most significant haul on Cease To Begin: an album that pays something of a price for the haste with which it was written; a haste that, with hindsight, actually proved to be the band's good fortune, for the way it managed to mask, through a youthful surge of energy, the absence of Mat Brooke's hand.

Having by now reached the status of a big-league band (they're headliners at many of America's major festivals, from Sasquatch to South By Southwest), the band returns, satisfied, for their third album appointment. Infinite Arms, amid a crescendo of anticipation lasting over a year, arrives more than two years after Cease To Begin, and sounds pleasantly carefree, unpretentious, aiming for little more than sketching out a few more or less catchy melodies and painting harmless little vignettes of naive romanticism.

It's nothing more than a gathering of passionate musicians, perhaps not even all that attached to the band's defining traits, playing together without worrying about winning over fans' favor.

Not a few of the latter (including this writer) will have been left stunned the first time the testosterone-swollen hook of “Compliments”, the lead single, hit them with its booming chorus (pleasant enough, if we're honest) and its coarse, straight-ahead simplicity.

All the ingredients are there, in short, to horrify the most hardline listeners, the ones who will count it among their certainties that this record belongs to the pile of the worst kitsch. And, indeed, the pomposity of the string arrangement on opener “Factory” really does sound tacky, a perhaps pointless flourish we'd have expected from a very different record, one by Neil Hannon, say (with rather different results, of course). One gets the impression, deep down, of having gone back to the golden age of britpop, sugary melodies dressed up in brash clothes with a total absence of rough edges; all of it reincarnated, however, in a band dressed in flannel shirts and vaqueros.

A sense of “emotional grandiloquence” runs through the whole first half of the record (not by chance almost entirely in a major key), from the hormonal cowboy-rock of “Laredo” to the all-too-knowing tail end of “Blue Beard” (in every sense: “Take a little time, gonna roll the dice/ Taken for a ride, any normal life will do, too/ Find another way, try to break the ice/ Every day and night, the banana peels were true, true”).

“Blue Beard” remains a good track regardless, a kind of lulling serenade, in which Bridwell's ever-surprising voice blends beautifully with the washes of guitar and cymbals accompanying him. The result is repeated in the springtime swirl of “Way Back Home”, whose delicate melody finds Ben seemingly following in the footsteps of the band's co-founder, Mat Brooke.

The parallel with Mat's Grand Archives is actually perceptible throughout the whole record, in the fusion of 60s pop (“Dilly”) and soft pedal steel-driven slow numbers (“Older”). The constant recourse to harmonies and little choruses — embellishments that, let's not tire of repeating, Bridwell's voice simply doesn't need — inevitably becomes cloying as the record unfolds, all the more so given that, especially in the second half, the inspiration drops off drastically.

The band settles for retracing its own steps, failing to recapture the emotional pull of the ballads on “Cease To Begin”, trying to compensate for the thin substance of the songwriting with grandiose arrangements (the title track is a glaring example). A messy power-pop number like “Northwest Apartment”, the kind of thing you'd at best find on the latest records by adrift bands like Snow Patrol, is a warning sign hard to miss. Perhaps more unexpected is the Fahey-esque arpeggio that opens “For Annabelle”, otherwise a fairly harmless ballad.

Band Of Horses, in short, seem to be following the same arc as bands like Kings Of Leon, from a proud southern-rock identity to jumping the fence, from the look of likeable country boys to the drumbeat of glossy videos. Anyone who sees things in such black-and-white terms will be quick to brand them just another indie boyband; in truth Bridwell is, in all likelihood, the same person he's always been, and “Infinite Arms” a low-key work in which his melodic instincts seem to be in shorter supply than usual.

Two years later came Mirage Rock to seal the deal with Columbia and Band Of Horses' status as a mainstream rock band. A certain reassuring, amorphous warmth wraps around the tracks on the record; the numerous little mood-piece ballads (the closing, baritone(!) “Heartbreak On The 101”, the limp, predictable “Long Vows”, the sugary psychedelia of “Shut-In Tourist”, the tickling little ditty “Everything's Gonna Be Undone” — all more or less heavily influenced by Tyler Ramsey's Laurel Canyon style) sit placidly, with their nostalgic, confessional tone, alongside the scorching-summer guitars of “Knock Knock”, the Nada Surf-style power-pop of “Feud”, and the West Coast sound of “A Little Biblical” (the only real rehash).

One final thought does occur, though, after the one-two of Infinite Arms and Mirage Rock: that this might be all we can ask of Band Of Horses from now on. A new, inoffensive, even catchy repertoire, a comforting cushion between the heart-stabs of their best material, just enough to survive one of their current live shows. And there, forget mirage: they'll turn out to be the promised land of a dream America, the genuine, reckless power of youth revealing itself.

Ten years on from Everything All The Time, and far from the country-fm cheapness of Mirage Rock, comes Why Are You OK, which tries, with mixed success, to return to the band of that debut, following songwriting and a shape far more refined than on Ben Bridwell's most recent output.

With Jason Lytle of Grandaddy producing, the record takes on a more accomplished, less two-dimensional air, but (thankfully) there's no real attempt to go back to basics; rather, before Bridwell turns into the new Kid Rock, it's a band drawing on its fine musicians to give the songs a bit of extra depth, even if they lack the drive of ten years ago.

The quietly understated ballad form seems to have somewhat taken over the bearded, tattooed family man Ben, who has admitted to writing more and more often at night, since by day he's busy with his four children (not a bad dad, eh?). Old-style “St. Augustine” does get a bit of added cheesiness, though, and loses a little impact, if you listen to “Even Still”, as does the comparison between “First Song” and “Dull Times” (a rather dull choice of opener).

Carrying on like this would amount to a cruel exercise: credit must be given to the record for continuing the Band Of Horses strand as an “expanded house concert” band, inaugurated with last year's acoustic live album, with a series of reassuring songs that are nearly always refined enough to justify the record's intimate atmosphere. The general slowing-down of the songs is, it must be said, sometimes the only new thing on offer (“Hag”, and the single “Casual Party” also echoes, perhaps not by accident, “Weed Party”), and the crowd-pleasing drift of Bridwell's songwriting is by now well established (“Barrel House” is the syrupy version of “Monsters”, “Lying Under Oak” is one of his most “geriatric” tracks).

Even so, Why Are You OK is the first new record in a long while that can be taken in whole without too much fuss: clean production, unpretentious songs with the odd genuinely more moving flash, or at least a glimmer of vitality here and there (“Solemn Oath”).

GRAND ARCHIVES

Mat Brooke's new creature is one of those bands that are most easily singled out by the blogger underground: not especially innovative, far more focused on melodies than on sounds, with a declared harmlessness about it; perhaps a longed-for landing place for our man, where he can best express his melodic instinct and play the singer-songwriter in disguise.

The taste of fame he got with Band Of Horses may have pushed him to retreat into a more intimate setting, closer to his beginnings with Carissa, while still holding on to his changed sensibility, one that steers him towards softer, sweeter, more caressing sensations. A need for normality that isn't purely musical either, confirmed by Mat opening a bar in the suburbs of Seattle; as he himself admits in an interview, the two activities seem linked when he states: "The only two talents I have are making music and running a bar." Hence the whistled tunes and ukulele strumming, harmonies à-la Beach Boys, with Mat venturing an octave higher, brushing against falsetto.

In 2008 the self-titled debut sees the light of day: Grand Archives, with its huge white piano on the cover, is a record that commands attention for the cleanness of its melodies, though it still shows a sound in flux. It's a record that doesn't fully come together, because it's uneven, not very cohesive. Sure, there remain several memorable hits, such as "Torn Blue Foam Couch" (the track that most recalls the Brooke-era Horses, with its airy, whirling chord progression) and "Miniature Birds", in which the band's pop vocation emerges forcefully, infusing fresh summery hints into the warm harmonica accompaniment.

At the same time, the slo-rock attitude survives in the aching duet with Jenn Ghetto on the gorgeous "Swan Matches", a kind of sweet return to his roots, to an Arizona populated by "arid faces" (“And how we stayed awake all night long/ How we stayed awake all night long/ We flew over fences/ We dodged all the moving cars/ and the dry Arizona faces/ the dry Arizona faces”); an attitude revisited without any rough edges, though, in a major-key surrender to warm, soothing sensations.

Taking refuge in his trademark style seems like a sound strategy at this early stage for the band, because it allows Mat to draw on his experience and deliver the best moments on this record, to which should be added the absorbed nocturnal ride of "Sleepdriving".

Otherwise, Grand Archives turns out to be pleasant but rather unremarkable, especially in certain acoustic ballads in E major like "George Kaminski", a fascinating tale of a prisoner who made the Guinness World Records for the largest collection of four-leaf clovers, or in the treacly romanticism of "Index Moon". The "archives" that Mat Brooke's new band is trying to compile still seem, then, to be filled in a rather uneven and inconsistent way.

We'd have to wait for the band's second record, Keep In Mind Frankenstein, to witness something fully realized, something that could represent a solid and more personal direction for the band. The dreamy sheen, born of a period spent recording in isolation in the woods of Index, in the mountains above Seattle, pulls us into a captivating Nordic fairy tale in which the band's polished pop takes on the more uniform colors of a cool summer night.

There are Mat's stories (above all that of Topsy, which he told us himself in the interview), delicate folk-pop frescoes ("Left For All The Strays", "Silver Amongst The Gold"), in some cases given a liquid quality by the presence of a steel guitar ("Oslo Novelist", "Dig That Crazy Grave"), absorbed moonlit harmonies ("Lazy Bones", "Siren Echo Valley Part I"); and all the ingredients that make up the best of the indie-folk movement of recent years.

Keep In Mind Frankenstein ultimately carries the sweet scent of an old children's book; it's one of those records worth revisiting years later with a pang of nostalgia.

The second part of "Witchy Park/ Tomorrow Will" brings back the most emotionally charged moments Mat has ever reached in his career, recovering a touch that some rash observers might have assumed was lost.

It's the strength of subdued emotions that are nonetheless far from defenseless, making their way as they seep into remote corners, where Mat's voice — never so vividly "fused" into a shifting, fluid musical fabric — settles slowly.

Brooke seems entirely at ease in a formula with undeniably singer-songwriter echoes (as in the solitary ukulele arpeggio of "Topsy's Revenge"), yet still marked by a palpable rapport within the group. All the makings are there, then, for a happily low-key continuation of Grand Archives' career: the years ahead may bring no great surprises, but Mat Brooke is by now too seasoned a musician to give in to the call of distant sirens. His Odyssey is nothing more than a splendid act of contentment.

SERA CAHOONE

Discovering this name among the members of Carissa — certainly not one of the heaviest acts, but still among the most interesting in the world of American singer-songwriters — it becomes clear just how aptly the worn-out phrase "convergence of talents" applies to this Seattle band. What's most striking is that, just like Bridwell, the supporting players showed absolutely remarkable vocal and songwriting gifts: Sera Cahoone deserves mention here, for her warm, penetrating timbre that perfectly matches her small-town stories, for which SubPop trots out the intriguing label of country-noirish.

First and foremost, mention must be made of Sera's experience as a member of Carissa's Wierd (with whom she was the main drummer) and as a contributor to the recording of Band Of Horses' "Everything All The Time", on which she once again plays drums. An infatuation with this instrument (later abandoned for obvious reasons) that has its roots in a personal history worthy of a Tenenbaum: a true enfant prodige, Cahoone was playing blues improv nights in Seattle at the age of 12.

The strings of our artist's Martin ring out for the first time, with their clear and beautifully metallic tone, in 2005, the year her self-titled debut came out. Sera Cahoone can, from a compositional standpoint, still seem a touch predictable and understated: the chord progressions appear overly rigid, even if the interplay between voice and acoustic guitar is undeniably moving. The reassuring averageness of the songs is then bolstered by a genuine pedal steel accompaniment, which cements, in this debut, the sense of a roots sketch that nonetheless holds more than a few moments of real enchantment.

Without much conviction, Sera sends a copy of the record to a local radio station, hoping for a bit of airplay. The small radio buzz that follows leads to an unexpected deal with SubPop, who first reissue Sera Cahoone and then equip her with a proper band, including "string maestro" Jeff Fielder, with strict orders to keep up the compositional effort.

What results is a record that makes a notable impact on the international indie scene: Only As The Day Is Long comes out in 2008 and is met with essentially unanimous praise. Now fully aware of her songwriting gifts, Sera delivers a work of mature tones, vivid colors and broad, confident brushstrokes. The dreamy odd-time signature of "Baker Lake", with its nocturnal, vibrant pace, deserves a place among the Americana masterpieces of recent years. In its melancholy wandering, in its aching interplay of banjo and pedal steel, what stands out is her ability to grasp tradition and reshape it in her own image, managing to carry a touch of those timeless atmospheres into her own music.

A skill that Cahoone shares with Mat Brooke, whose departure Band Of Horses would suffer following "Everything All The Time". The subdued but vital country sound of that record resurfaces on Only As The Day Is Long, particularly on the title track, with its cheerful banjo riff.

Sera's second record is especially captivating for its atmospheres of nocturnal meditation, in modest motel rooms, with a bottle of whiskey as sole companion ("Shitty Hotel", "You're Not Broken"). Or for its journeys to far-flung places, whose pull we feel even without any specific connection to them; in the same way, we seem to be riding along on battered metal Greyhounds, gazing out at the landscape through a dust-caked window (the gorgeous "You Might As Well").

It's the strange power of music that can evoke the great American open spaces, something that can stir awake a part of the listener that's hidden but still very much alive: a power well guarded by the multifaceted mix of personalities who found themselves, whether by chance or by design, in those bars that seemed drained of meaning in the Seattle of the late '90s.

For Deer Creek Canyon (2012) Sera clearly takes her time, but the result is a collection of rather bland songs, however well recorded and performed. The record is saved, so to speak, only by sheer craft, but the flatness of the melodic solutions — not helped here by the minimalism of the arrangements — induces yawns on more than one occasion ("One To Blame", "Rumpshaker"). Only the title track is worth salvaging, a nice slice of fresh-air country and open-air bonfires.

With hindsight, it becomes even clearer that the most introverted yet, at the same time, most visceral soul of Carissa's Wierd was embodied by Jenn. Even on the records of that original band, her songs seemed like sealed-off compartments, solitary broodings wrapped in an impenetrable veil. A "communicative" difficulty that would remain a constant feature of Ghetto's career even after the breakup of Carissa's Wierd.

For her solo venture she chooses the enigmatic, minimal pseudonym "S", which appears on her album covers in the form of an illuminated letter. Otherwise, the approach remains, at least at first, the one glimpsed on the Carissa's Wierd records: personal stories marked by expressive minimalism, both musically (for the most part these are songs in which Jenn's voice, defenseless and pained, intertwines with jittery metallic arpeggios) and lyrically. And yet, despite the absolute minimalism of the instrumentation, what stands out is Ghetto's ability to craft multifaceted, penetrating guitar arrangements.

The first record was released in 2001 through Brown Records, but actually contains material recorded between '97 and '99. Sadstyle drops us into the claustrophobic, oppressive atmosphere of a bare studio apartment, populated only by obsessions and recurring nightmares, which manifest themselves in cigarette butts and abandoned glasses scattered here and there. It's an extremely inward-turned record, in which Jenn, a sort of vestal of an indelible lo-fi gloom, paints an endless vortex from which she seems, almost deliberately, to be pushed away.

One has to cling to the flashes of guitar that occasionally break through with a hint of vigor from the haze enveloping Sadstyle ("Up&Down"), without dwelling too much on the lyrics: probably utterly sincere and personal, but so stripped to the bone that they remain helpless laments, barren of any real spark (from "Pathetic": “I hope you feel like you’ve lost this game/ I hope you feel like you’re missing something/ I hope you cry when you get home/ Are you missing me?”).

The likely mechanism of fascination that might kick in while listening to this otherwise weighty compendium of suffering is, on one hand, identification, and on the other, a sort of protective instinct given the painful events Jenn recounts. The fact remains that listening to Sadstyle is truly exhausting, not just because of its length, but because of the record's monotone character, which unfortunately conforms entirely to the cliché of the "tunnel with no way out".

The electronic and rhythmic touches of the follow-up, Puking And Crying (in the characteristic diaspora of our artist among niche labels, here she lands on Suicide Squeeze), are therefore a pleasant surprise: for this second work, dated 2004, Jenn also enlists the collaboration of Creighton Barrett (once an occasional member of Carissa's Wierd and now drummer for Band Of Horses) and Josh Wackerly (Panda And Angel), projecting her music into the contemporary electro-pop movement, to the point of drawing flattering comparisons to Postal Service and Xiu Xiu. The compositional foundation obviously remains the same, a substrate over which drum loops and synthetic hiss settle, luminous shards and dry noises of crumbling urban (and inner) landscapes.

The expressive effect is at times convincing, for example in the icy, dark outbursts of "Falling", which then open up into a synthetic beat tied to a Ghetto who finally sounds piercing on the cry "Please forgive me". Or in the leaden plod of "Crushed", a bituminous build-up that accompanies Jenn through another sentimental invective.

Small sensations that testify to an attempt to broaden her expressive range (at times reminiscent of the light gloom of Bjork), with the inherent problem of our artist's still-insurmountable emotional fixity. Jenn remains a prisoner of themes that, anchored to her usual visceral psychodrama atmospheres, end up too "navel-gazing", too convoluted to truly draw you in. Above all, these enrichments are unfortunately backed up all too little by extremely low-key songwriting: it's worth noting that, summing up the thirty tracks that make up Sadstyle and Puking And Crying, managing to fix a single memorable track in your mind is a rather arduous task.

A full six years pass before another work by her sees the light of day, one whose traces are easily lost given the scant visibility that has always marked her (it's said that, during her first concert in Seattle several years ago, the songs were often interrupted by fits of hysterical laughter).

Ghetto arrives at this third album without giving any hint that she might somehow "reconsider her position", abandoning even in part the predominantly expressive minimalism that has always set her apart (even before this solo project).

I'm Not As Good At It As You, on the other hand, lets a few glimmers show through, particularly on the opening "Wait", which features ukulele accompaniment (merely arpeggiated, fear not) from Mat Brooke himself and from another ex-Carissa's member, Sarah Standard, on violin. It must be said that this is basically the only notable instance in which one can appreciate an attempt to seek out other solutions, ones that go beyond the relentless dialogue between guitars, whose sound here is as sharp and piercing as Jenn's bare-bones stories.

Stories of "ordinary" despair ("Another stupid story/ Breakfast in the bathroom/ I can't do this one more day", from "Not A Problem"), where venturing too stubbornly to single out the moments worth dwelling on can prove risky, given that Ghetto's writing is certainly sincere but also, to put it mildly, bare-bones.

What should instead be noted in an entirely positive light is the greater sense of openness that comes through first and foremost in the different recording approach, cleaner here: a breath of fresh air compared to the suffocating sound of her previous efforts. Perhaps the "bedroom heartache" atmosphere is lost, but it's more than made up for in terms of vitality, as she finally seeks out a kind of dialogue with the listener. The first stirrings of hope thus chase one another throughout the record, from the already-mentioned "Wait" to the almost explosive build (by her standards, that is) of "Through It All".

Ghetto's arpeggios are often nervous, restless: they press forward ("R.I.P. Calgon") and, in some cases, sweep you along ("Save You"). At other times she gives herself over to dark filigrees and gathering clouds, as in the gripping invective of "This Is Love" and the pensive, evocative silence of "The Message", which then shatters into a painful, lashing awakening.

There remains, however, the risk of running into a certain underlying monotony (caused mostly by the tireless recycling of the same themes), though this isn't always borne out in how the songs develop, which maintain a reasonably varied path despite the scant means at her disposal. This is the real plus of I'm Not As Good At It As You, which can also be "forgiven" for the subtitle "The Agony" tacked onto the outro: a convincing track, incidentally, so ecstatic and intangible that it resembles some of Justin Vernon's most recent releases.

Jenn Ghetto, in short, seems to want to break out of her shell, and this record bears witness to that; who knows, perhaps in the future we might get to see something truly "fully realized"...

For her fourth record, Cool Choices, Jenn brought in Chris Walla to produce and worked, practically for the first time, with a full band.

The emo background thus comes through, even within Ghetto's confessional, understated style, in the arpeggios and Kinsella-esque guitar strumming of "Balderdash", and in the chiaroscuro mood shifts of "Muffin", even more indebted to American Football. The producer's hand is noticeable in the more emo-pop tracks, reminiscent of early DCFC, such as "Vampires" and "Brunch", and in the solo piano pieces, a device used to tone down the guitar orgy that also made "Transatlanticism" such a great record ("Losers", "Pacific", "Remember Love").

This is the right path, and indeed, as with the previous I'm Not As Good At It As You, Jenn's somewhat claustrophobic love stories come into their own within a more "constructed" setting, despite the inevitable sweetening.

Contributions by Giuliano Delli Paoli ("Cease To Begin") and Pier Eugenio Torri ("Grand Archives")

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

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