BAND OF HORSES - Everything All The Time (20th Anniversary Edition)

I don't remember exactly where, or when, it all began. What I remember perfectly, though, is how: a guitar arpeggio, a burning voice, an electric blast suddenly tearing through the apparent calm and filling it completely, in the rainbow of colors of a chorus that feels almost unreal in its unbearable perfection. The love story (and maybe hate story too) with Band Of Horses began for everyone, then and perhaps still today, in the same way: amid the restless emotional swells of "The Funeral".

Those were the golden years of American indie rock, and looking back now, how can you hold back – even just metaphorically – the classic tear? The Strokes had broken new ground with “Is This It”, ushering in an exhilarating new era, and great albums (and bands) kept pouring out one after another: in no particular and by no means exhaustive order, Death Cab For Cutie with “Transatlanticism“, Wilco with “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot“, Arcade Fire from neighboring Canada with “Funeral”, and then The Shins, Nada Surf and countless others, among them Ben Bridwell's Band of Horses. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight at the photo shoots of the era – a strange mix of country beards and flannel shirts – they were on Sub Pop, after all – is perhaps the most useful way to try to describe, two decades on, an album like “Everything All The Time”.

The twentieth-anniversary edition, complete with remastered tracks, bonus material, various alternate takes and a handful of vintage live recordings, is the perfect occasion to reckon once again with one of those albums that seem to float placidly outside of time, as if they'd always existed. Each of its ten songs goes its own way. And yet there's an invisible thread binding them together inseparably: that touch, that style, that particular way of doing things that makes the band's signature somehow unmistakable, even though the whole record rests on the shoulders of a kind of revivalism that, once the fateful Nineties were over, was just learning the art of renewing itself through emulation.

The first distinguishing trait is Bridwell's ringing voice, soon to become the band's trademark, but it's not the only one. The way the guitars (or the banjo) are conceived, the way indie rock is injected with folk or even country stylings (with Okkervil River's notes proving useful in this regard) are, in their own way, unique traits of the Seattle band.

Looking closely, in fact, tracks like “The First Song” seem to anticipate by a few years – and thus point the way for – indie rock as later shaped by projects like Real Estate, even if “Wicked Gil” then arrives to light up the horizon with a dazzling glow, making promises that the American band would only partly manage to keep. Besides the already mentioned, now legendary “The Funeral”, other standout tracks include “The Great Salt Lake”, which lets the energy built up in the verse implode into an almost atmospheric chorus before the usual cascade of guitar arpeggios arrives, and “Monsters”, which flirts with folk in a song that grows more captivating as it unwinds past the five-minute mark.

Folk blends with country in another cornerstone of this early body of work, “I Go To The Barn Because I Like The”, while “Our Swords” builds from its bassline and “Weed Party” takes flight on the wings of the most classic kind of youthful carefreeness.

In the twentieth-anniversary edition, Band of Horses fans can enjoy a reworked version of “(Biding Time Is A) Boat To Row”, the great leftover track from that era, accompanied by a brand-new video, as well as the placid arpeggios of “Part Two” and “Coal Mine”, postcards that are anything but faded from a season that still feels close enough to touch. Also worth noting is the inclusion of the demo versions, which offer a window into the birth and evolution of songs that have never stopped shining with their own light.

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12/04/2026