By 2007’s Cease to Begin, Bridwell was only just getting away with the kind of mawkish sentimentality that pocked that album (“no-one is ever gonna love you like I do”), and the grandiosity of Everything was starting to be exchanged for pomposity. The story of Band of Horses since then has been the story of that balance being lost. This intense intimacy was the perfect counter-weight to the wide-screen stadium rock being peddled by the rest of the Horses. ‘The Funeral’ demonstrates the tightrope that Everything All the Time dared to walk, between the mass-appeal of its soaring, effects-laden chorus sounding like it came from (before ending up on) countless Top Gear montages, and its dense and deeply personal lyrical content which actively shunned attempts toward objectivity or universality. Lead singer Ben Bridwell announced his arrival on that song with the line “I’m coming up only to hold you under”, a lyric outlining the intentions of an emotionally suffocating album on which even the hokeyest of sentiments (“I like to think I’m a mess that you’d wear with pride”) sounded painstakingly genuine. ‘ The Funeral’, from Band of Horses’ debut album Everything All the Time, remains the band’s biggest hit and most well-known song to date, and is a good yardstick by which to measure their progress over a six-year career.
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