Band Of Horses

Thu 20th May, 2010 in Features

In just a two and a half months time, Band Of Horses will join an amazing Splendour In The Grass bill and play sideshows celebrating the newly released Infinite Arms album.

The band’s drummer Creighton Barrett promises much from their highly anticipated tour. “The shows are going to be fucking awesome!” he declares, without reservation. “All of us love Australia so much. Hopefully we’ll run into The Drones – looking forward to that! We can’t wait to get back there. We haven’t been to Perth yet, and we have Mike Noga from The Drones opening up for us. We can’t wait,”

Band Of Horses certainly aren’t strangers to the festival circuit – at least, not lately, with sets in Memphis and New Orleans festivals respectively in days just gone. Such shows, Barrett explains, bring their own special surprises. He reflects upon an appearance in Tennessee fondly – even if the sun scorched upon the musicians without remorse. “I saw everyone on the front line, their faces turning redder and redder, getting fucking burnt. We got to the last song and we thought “Holy fuck, its hot!”

“We got off stage and our manager was there, and he’s like ‘Um – can you guys go play one more?” We were like ‘Why?!’ – we don’t play encores at festivals! But he goes ‘Look over at the monitors’ and Bruce Springsteen was standing right there. We were like ‘Oh, shit!’ “ the drummer admits. “We got to hang out with Bruce for about half an hour in our trailer in the back.”

It seems Band Of Horses have a few tricks of their own – namely, an iPad guitar. “Ben got an iPad for his birthday about two weeks ago. There’s this application called Thumb Jam on it. You can pick any instrument you want, and you just use your fingers, like pick a scale or chord or whatever and it creates that instrument,” Barrett says of the novel idea. “The whole time we were like ‘You gotta pull that off on stage somehow! Dude, it’d be so rad if we could use cardboard to make a flying-V shape and put it (the iPad) in the middle.’ ”

Their dreams were soon realized with a crucial discovery. “I went out to get some exercise, and as I was leaving the festival I passed some of these polyfibre, eight-foot guitar cut-outs,” Barrett remembers. “I looked at one and I was like ‘Dude: iPad would fit perfectly in the fucking middle right there.’ We Jimi-Hendrixed the fuck out. We call it the day that music cried.”

Its all in a day’s work for a band genuinely excited on the eve of the release of their third album. Barrett identifies the differences between this record and its predecessor.

“For the first time, we started out with thirty odd songs, which was the first vast difference in our songwriting process. With Cease To Begin, seven songs were stretched into ten. We went from not having enough material and then on this record we had so much that we had to chop down,” he recalls.

“Towards the end we decided to start producing ourselves and Ben was funding this record on his own dime. Once we were in the studio by ourselves, more of the original plans for this record came about for what we thought we should sound like as a band. There were no boundaries, we had so much freedom and I think it really reflected on this record. Its a lot more about taking a chance.”

But with only twelve songs set for Infinite Arms, what will become of the other tracks? “EPs are definitely planned, there are couple of things for soundtracks that are coming out that are songs that didn’t make it to the record. There’s a healthy number still out there that for some reason didn’t fit the final bill. But they’ll definitely see the light of day.”

Amidst the lead-up to their latest release, Band Of Horses experienced its fair share of additions and departures – from band members to record labels. With touring came a series of hard calls. “We would sometimes hire a friend to come out and played guitar, sort of like a hired gun. We got to the point where Ryan – the keyboard player – well, he’s just a fucking bad ass on any instrument, so [we thought] if he plays guitar that well, we don’t need someone else to come out. We thought for a little while we needed some extra oomph. Maybe we did or didn’t at the time, but we figured out that it works just fine as a five-piece,” Barrett notes of their current line-up.

And as for their farewell from Sub Pop, a similarly diplomatic approach is taken. “Sub-Pop was still our family, but our contract was up. We had a two record deal with them and we were trying to forge a new direction, one of which was getting more of our music out to more places. There was no dark-dealings on Sub Pop, we’re all still friends,”

I finally falter in resisting a certain question, fishing for a response to their inclusion in the beloved Guitar Hero. It would seem that Cigarettes, Wedding Bands can now be played by gamers of all-ages across the globe. But has Barrett himself ever indulged in playing on his own track? “No, I’m fucking God-awful at that shit, man,” he admits. “I think its cool that they chose that song. It’s a bad ass, creeper song and I never expected it! I figured it would be a more obvious choice like Funeral or something like that. I think its pretty funny, little kids rocking out to these really somber, dark kind of lyrics! I’m glad that it gets a little love out there,”

“The coolest thing I wanted as a kid was a half-pipe in my backyard, probably. And now, its still that! Just kidding. Right now the biggest thing I want would be one of my five motorcycles to run. I pay insurance on two of them and they’re not even running. I dream now of having a running bike!”

But for now, Band Of Horses can be content with an extensive tour of North America, before taking their shows to Europe. And that’s something to get excited about. “Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, a few people singing the words, so something’s working!”

FasterLouder proudly presents Band Of Horses sideshows:
Thursday 22nd July – Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide
Tuesday 27th July – Palace, Melbourne
Thursday 29th July – Enmore Theatre, Sydney