An Horse frontwoman Kate Cooper spends the band's second album, Walls, struggling to connect to other people and watching other lives as they fall apart. On "Swallow the Sea" she hits on a possible explanation: "Maybe it's our convict blood," posits the refrain, a clever and poignant nod to Cooper's and bandmate Damon Cox's Australian heritage. Perhaps that's not the most scientific rationale for why the duo's songs are full of so much heartache and dissolution, but it's the best one An Horse offer, unless you count the time in "Not Mine" where Cooper admits, "That's enough 'Twin Peaks' for one night."
These moments of self-awareness and cheek stick out because Cooper spends much of Walls navel-gazing and mired in helplessness. As a result, the success of the album's songs is pretty much directly proportional to how much of a riffy ruckus they kick up to bolster Cooper's bum trips. An Horse may seem superficially limited with only two members and a stripped-down reliance on guitar and drums, but the duo still manages to range impressively between indie-rock anthemics and straight-up punk-pop blasts. The punky stuff is the most fun of course-- "Airport Death", "Trains and Tracks", and "Leave Me" invite favorable Sleater-Kinney comparisons in the marriage of Cooper's aggrieved, plaintive vocals and the music's ripping uptempo blur. Even with more space to breathe, though, An Horse prove capable of powerful songcraft, taking a more ruminative but still rousing emo-indie tack on "Dressed Sharply" and "Know This, We've Noticed", songs that show you why the band made a worthy opening act to Death Cab for Cutie in 2008.
The back half of Walls finds An Horse's music propping up Cooper with decreased verve, and the results are accordingly hit or miss. Her heartsick complaints can grab you by the throat when the band's pleading too, but midtempo meanders and subdued strummers tend to make the whole effect downright grating, with the title track and closing "Tiny Skeletons" being the worst offenders (though the pretty acoustic detour "Windows in the City" is a notable exception). Walls is still a likeable and engaging album on the whole, but it's hard not to be a tad worried that An Horse's debut album began with a song where Cooper fiercely and endearingly sang, "And like that good Hole album/ I can live through this," while its follow-up ends with a song where she mewls, "Ian Curtis said it would tear us apart."
