a shot of Ben Bridwell greeting Band of Horses fans last night at the Showbox. Just in case you wanted to be prepared for the scope of his beard before heading into tonight’s sure to be delightful all ages show.
band of horses // the showbox // 19 november 2007 [flickr]

It seems that the bloggers have broken Ben Bridwell, just a little. At last night’s Band of Horses show, he made a point of letting everyone in the audience know that he was having a good time and that it was really a joy to play for this crowd of composed of wonderful supportive people who had sold out the first of two nights at the Showbox. Throughout the set, he made references to the big blog “scandals” of the preceding year — making self-deprecating efforts to show that he’d made peace with the YouTube generation [s'gum], lightly teasing the kids in the audiences documenting the whole thing and acknowledging that selling a song to Wal*Mart [p'fork] had taken a little edginess out of the unavoidable “the Funeral” even after they decided to kill the deal [bv] before it made it to television.

Not that anyone in the onetime hometown held any of it against them. Returning from South Carolina enormously bearded and bearing a banner with the latest album’s cover art, Band of Horses were an entirely different animal from the still ragged and full of promise ensemble that opened a post-mortem Carissa’s Wierd CD release at the Crocodile to about thirty people three years (give or take a couple days) ago.
In the year since extolling the band’s virtues among Seattle’s seven gifts to the world [mb], I’d managed to miss them every time they were in town. I’m happy to say that they’ve gotten even better and had one fewer saxophone solo than the last time I saw them. The show was one of sparkling energy, hooting, yipping, and hollering between songs. There was a hatchet tambourine solo and back to back guitaring. I was reminded of all of the reasons that I liked Everything All the Time so much and was more convinced of the merits of Cease to Begin. The kids up front pumped fists in the air, waved hands, shouted for the band to “come home”, and, yes, filmed their favorite songs on shaky outstretched digital cameras. By the time they got to the expected cover, the fake end of the set, the announced encore, and the real end of the show, they’d made it though a good chunk of both albums yet it all seemed over too soon.

Related posts:

1. monday agenda : band of horses, night 1 of 2
2. be there now: (band of) horses
3. keep it like a secret : band of horses at vera this weekend
4. band of horses, still underrated at 8.8
5. so much for all the news : band of horses lineup shakeup