Why Are You OK? doesn’t sound much like Poco or .38 Special, so longtime fans are likely to hear it as Band of Horses’ best work in nearly a decade on general principle. Don’t assume they’re the majority: Mirage Rock was unfortunate truth-in-advertising for Band of Horses’ ultimate devolution into platitudinal fairground music, but it was still favorably reviewed, debuting at No. 13 on Billboard with even greater success in Europe. While Ben Bridwell may have been disappointed over Mirage Rock’s inability to please everyone, it offers an opportunity whereby Why Are You OK? can somehow sound like an edgy rebranding: even if this album doesn’t sound much like “The Funeral,” Bridwell is at least willing to acknowledge that Band of Horses was once a beloved indie rock band.
So the optics are better this time around. Band of Horses partnered up with Rick Rubin’s label and the production has changed hands from someone responsible for the first couple of Steve Miller and Eagles records to the dude behind The Sophtware Slump*.* Whether the partnership with Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle is inspired or productive, it’s at least new, which is just as good. While Why Are You OK? lacks the specific sense of place that Seattle and South Carolina embedded in their first two LPs, “Broken Household Appliance National Forest” is a more interesting setting for the same old Band of Horses songs than the 4 p.m. slot at whatever festival still focuses on guitar music.
Lytle’s fingerprints are all over Why Are You OK?, and this is the closest thing you’re going to get to a Grandaddy record without actual Grandaddy: the seven-minute, prog odyssey “Dull Times/Moon” could be heard as Bridwell’s attempt at an “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot”-style opening gauntlet and nearly every open space thereafter is crammed with analog, squelchy synthesizers, ticky-tack drum machines and voicemail messages.
But Lytle’s presence ultimately serves as a reminder of what you miss about Grandaddy rather than Band of Horses. The quirks are try-hard in a way that makes Why Are You OK? unfavorably compare to the recent triumphs in capricious, quasi-indie southern rock. Whereas My Morning Jacket’s*The Waterfall *and Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color felt like the work of songwriters who can upscale their eccentricities to an arena setting, Bridwell’s the inverse—these are populist, mundane songs that tack on their idiosyncrasies in post-production like Instagram filters.
The superficially pleasant aspects of Band of Horses have not yet abandoned them: Bridwell’s unorthodox enunciation and convivial persona are immediately identifiable, and it’s no longer necessary to compare him to any number of high lonesome indie types. And when Why Are You OK? charms, it does so in the humble, disarming manner that's come to be expected. “In a Drawer” fully commits to its aw-shucks nostalgia by having J Mascis pop in for the chorus in a welcome, well-timed “sitcom neighbor” sort of way. When Bridwell writes a song that’s meant to be bashfully beautiful, he gets there (“Whatever, Wherever,” “Lying Under Oak”), and when Band of Horses try to rock out, they succeed and do so functionally.
Bridwell's plainspoken lyricism can still be effective. Amidst the bong-loaded ambience of “Dull Times,” he tries to talk his way through writer’s block and he spends the duration of Why Are You OK? creating domestic still lives—when he sings about sitting on a bearskin rug listening to grandpa, or getting drunk or just sitting on the porch killing time, those songs are about just that. Elsewhere, he’s clutching knives in his sleep, screaming so loud upon awakening that he’s worried the cops will come. He later admits, “Getting me arrested was the strangest way to show me that you’re mine/But it saved my life,” and all of the above is presented with the same genial, arms-around-shoulder amity of rock songs that could be heard within any bar or drive-time playlist between Band of Skulls and Kings of Leon.
Then again, maybe that’s proof of a low-key genius at work here. Much of Why Are You OK? was inspired by Bridwell’s experience as a father of four—recording all night and taking his kids to school looking like the “fucking scariest dad.” Fatherhood teaches some to put their own problems aside and recognize what’s really important when other people are depending on you. That’s great parenting, not necessarily great artistry, and the title of Why Are You OK? becomes as unintentionally truthful as that of Mirage Rock. Every darker, weirder impulse got glossed over while the music gives an agreeable shrug.
