A greater emphasis on country music elements was arguably the chief reason Band of Horses evolved from a pleasantly forgettable amalgam of My Morning Jacket and the Shins on the group's debut album into something noticeably more distinctive and satisfying by last year's follow-up, Cease to Begin. Without selling the newfound twang too thickly, the band nonetheless made a shift towards a down-home earthiness that tethered some of its more evanescent tendencies.
Having formerly played with members of Band of Horses in the defunct sad-eyed Seattle outfit Carissa's Wierd, then-drummer Sera Cahoone followed its offshoot act long enough to handle kit duties for the aforementioned debut, departing prior to the recording of Cease to Begin. Clearly, however, she was on the same wavelength as her erstwhile bandmates regarding the need to temper ephemerality with something sturdier. Cahoone's own sophomore full-length, Only as the Day Is Long, could easily have wafted into the realm of wispy noncommittal Cat Power soundalikes itself if not for the reassuring presence of certain rustic-signifying instrumentation and arrangements.
Cahoone enacts this push-and-pull from the opening track, "You Might as Well", girding gently clomping drums and a folky guitar figure against her lambent, echoing vocals, the song's subtle country underpinnings turning it into something hypnotic as opposed to hazily undefined. Its successor, "Baker Lake", nicely introduces the banjo and pedal steel that will likewise help anchor Cahoone for much of the remainder of the album, the latter instrument superlatively decorating "Runnin' Your Way" and "Tryin'" in particular. A couple of times ("Happy When I'm Gone", the title track) Cahoone's assembled players even rustle up a knotty acoustic groove near-worthy of Iron and Wine's last record. The record's most significant musical disappointment is that Cahoone doesn't grace the drum stool more herself, with "Baker Lake", which features the record's most sublime percussion by some measure, being her sole turn with the skins.
As a singer and lyricist, Cahoone doesn't do terribly much here to shake herself from the shadows of luminaries like Cat Power, Lisa Germano, and Azure Ray. That's not to say there aren't plenty of nicely evocative moments, as Cahoone does an especially nice job of describing the physical spaces of tousled and fraying love affairs on "Shitty Hotel", the exquisitely languorous "Seven Hours Later", and the title track. A wearied but welcoming tone of acceptance also permeates several of these songs, including "You're Not Broken" and "Baker Lake", and Cahoone mostly does a good job of skirting banalities, though "Runnin' Your Way" comes mighty close with pick-me-ups like "You've got so much left in you/ And a big old world to see." Once she catches wind that real country immersion demands narrative heft as well as music solidity, Cahoone will be a true earth-bound force.
