I recently acquired the new Band of Horses album Infinite Arms but was unfortunately let down a little bit considering it didn’t rock as much as the last one. The band has gone for a more stripped down approach then before and losing the rock sound they had is part of the process it looks like. The first album Everything All The Time is a fairly decent album with some solid tracks and well received by most critics who praised their mix of folk, country and rock all in one. The follow up and arguably their best album was Cease To Begin a folk album with rock n roll elements to it that had almost a flawless tracklist. The band has been known to be very hippy like and been playing more and more “stoner” festivals since the release so I can see the direction they are going in as a band. Infinite Arms in my opinion is an average album and wasn’t really what I was hoping for but I just hope the album takes awhile to grow on me.
The opening track “Factory” doesn’t really do it for me as the opener but it’s a fair track but nothing spectacular and I wish they would have done a more similar track to their previous album to make that transition into the new one. The following track “Compliments” is a solid track and the second listen I really enjoyed it and would say it’s single worthy at some point on their major label release. The third track “Laredo”, which I believe is the album single is probably one of the better tracks on the album and I would suggest listening to this first before buying this album because it probably sums the album’s sound up. The album is filled with mediocre tracks in my opinion and the only other tracks that “wow’d” me were the songs ”Dilly” and the album closer “Neighbor” which were more Band of Horses I remember. If you want to check this band out I would suggest giving their last album a listen before this one and deciding which sound you like better. I’ve only gone through two times with this album so I may be jumping the gun on my review but nothing has blown me away yet. This band is for fans of The Shins, Modest Mouse and The New Pornographers. Check out the album single below.
