Band of Horses' first two efforts-- 2006's grandiose, heart-on-sleeve Everything All the Time and 2007's Cease to Begin-- are practically of a piece. More of a good thing's not usually a bad thing, but even fans of Cease admitted it was a merely lateral move, one Ben Bridwell and his Band have seemingly taken great strides to correct since. Infinite Arms, their third record, took some 16 months to record and was compiled from dozens of tracks. Ryan Monroe, Tyler Ramsey, and Bill Reynolds joined the fold-- Bridwell is now the only member of the band who featured on Everything-- and each of the Horses lent a hand to the songwriting this time around. Hell, Bridwell's even going around saying stuff like "in many ways, this is the first Band of Horses record." And the result of all this new blood, a year-plus of hard work? More of the same, yet somehow much less.
It seemed clear Band of Horses knew their strengths; gigantic, unabashedly earnest choruses, flittery verse melodies, and that honeypot in Ben Bridwell's throat. They are not, and never have been, the most musically dexterous or lyrically sophisticated band around, but when they're on, a dorky-when-you-say-it line like "the world is such a wonderful place" could really hit you below the neck. But Infinite Arms rarely seems to just go for it in the way Everything All the Time and Cease to Begin did, lyrically or musically. Despite a few minor and largely unobtrusive additions to the instrumental palette, the playing feels tentative, reviving old melodies ("Laredo" is practically more "Weed Party" than "Weed Party") and putting a softer focus on the new ones. The aw-shucks naïvety and brash overstatement is dialed down; there are precious few heart-tugging, glass-in-air moments. And Bridwell pulls his formidable voice back, often mewling in a kind of Seals and Crofts-style close harmony or occasionally offering his bandmates the mic without him. Despite all the additions and subtractions, it's decidedly the work of the same band, but if Infinite Arms were, as Bridwell suggests, the first Band of Horses record, I doubt we'd be this curious about the third one.
True to form, there are some lovely moments that would've sat nicely on their previous records: The Brian Wilson-indebted highlight "Bluebeard"; the familiar yet spirited "Laredo"; the knotty melodies of lead single "Compliments" and "Dilly", which will knock around your head for a while. Infinite's got a nice, leisurely way about it, and while a few moments exhibit more flash, Phil Ek's crystalline production once again does a nice job staying out of the way. But their slowpoke anthems and sunburnt rave-ups feel so worn-in, they're growing shapeless. A few well-placed lyrical potboilers could've really spruced up the drabber numbers, but the words here mostly range from the mundane ("oh, my love, is that you on the phone?") to the goofy ("I was thinking it over by the snack machine/ I thought about you in a candy bar") to cringe-inducing nonsense (the album-ending chorus of "if Bartles & Jaymes didn't need no first names, we could live by our own laws and favor.")
Most frustrating about Infinite Arms, though, is that what it's really missing seems almost intangible; it's tough to quantify "heart," but that's not far off. Could be all the months in the studio, might be just plucking the wrong dozen from their tunes, but Infinite Arms just feels less tender, less personal, more twang-by-numbers than the last couple, despite its familiar sound and many of the same principals. There's much less of that sky-spanning, obtuseness-be-damned freedom that characterized their biggest (and, generally, best) moments in the past, and worst of all, that tug in Bridwell's throat feels muted, like even he's not really feeling it. Which is up there with Infinite Arms' most relatable sentiments.
