On this balmy London evening, music fans flocked in their droves to the Scala, Kings Cross, to catch California-based trio BAND OF HORSES perform their first ever gig in London.
Band of Horses was born out of the break-up of Seattle indie septet Carissa’s Wierd back in 2003. In 2004 Ben Bridwell (vocals, guitar) and Mat Brooke (guitar) formed the Band of Horses, and have since been galloping to success. Sorry. Anyway, apart from releasing their critically acclaimed album "Everything all the Time", the Horses have seen their songs feature on TV programmes ‘The O.C’, ‘One Tree Hill’, and the 2006 movie ‘Penelope’. Well a little exposure never hurts does it?
First on were psychedelic rocksters THE HELLSAYERS, who set out to emulate bands such as My Morning Jacket, but ended up sounded very much like Oasis (only better). Although this may not be a fair statement as we only caught the tail-end of their set, which was one huge vibrating swirl of heavy guitars and primary-colour chords that made your knees shaky. Great stuff.
After an interim of about 20 minutes, whereby it seemed half of London was crammed into the venue, Band of Horses walked onto the stage looking all biblical and hairy. At least Bridwell did. It was hard to see much else on account of a crowd that comprised mainly of tall lanky blokes with big scruffy hair (damn you Russell Brand). In fact the venue was so rammed that many people had given up on trying to actually *see* anything and were listening to the music from the outside corridors. To say the Scala was full to capacity is the understatement of the century.
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They opened their set with the first song of 'Everything all the Time', aptly named 'The First Song' (clever eh?), and then moved swiftly into the beautifully epic 'The Great Salt Lake' - a huge juggernaut of a song that had Bridwell whizzing his guitar around as if he was riding a Bucking Bronco.
The Horses continued to pow-wow their adoring fans with one anthemic cathedral-reverb laden song after another, with Bridwell’s cracked and wobbly vocals - highly reminiscent of Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) minus the wackiness, and Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction) – riding over the rich musical noise, and showing his vulnerability beneath the beard.
Each and every number was climatic and the crowd loved it – there was a real sense of reciprocation between the band and the audience that made for a fantastic atmosphere.
Part of the charm of Band of Horses was the disarming banter between songs. Not a smidgen of cool aloofness was to be seen – they were genuinely happy to be there. And in turn, that made We The People happy. The only problem being that there were so many adoring fans it was hard to see anything except for the back of a lot of heads and chequered Western Cowboy shirts. Which is testament to the pulling power of the Band of Horses.
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