Band of Horses Begin

Cease to Begin
BAND OF HORSES
(Sub Pop)

Band of Horses' Cease to Begin starts with an anthemic, slow-building mystery titled "Is there a Ghost." Band leader/singer Ben Bridwell drenches his thin, high voice in reverb, but it still sounds sincere, as he seems to be weighing the pros and cons of living alone. Is it the metaphorical ghost of a past lover that's haunting him — or is he alluding to childhood trauma? Those are the questions we ponder as a steady stream of manipulated guitars pour through the speakers. The song lasts just under three minutes — and we're left wanting more.

Still in mope mode, the next number, "Ode to LRC," rolls a bit; there's funk simmering under the blankets of gauzy guitars. The vocals sound assured. Sorta. But it's hard to decipher the lyric. "That dog don't come around no more," Bridwell sings in the same voice we heard on the first track. We get spots of melodramatic string orchestration and then the lyric becomes clearer. He's bemoaning small-town ennui and big-city disconnectedness all at the same time. "The world is such a wonderful place," he intones, with almost the same ironic pull that Lou Reed implemented so spectacularly on "Perfect Day."

Next, it's a soft parade of keyboard and what sounds to be a flute (the liner notes include no particular instrument credits or lyrics). Bridwell's college-rock voice still can't stand on its own, but it approaches emotional heft. "No one is ever gonna love you more than I do," he sings.

It's a shitty line, but the melody is rather moving and it smacks of genuine love — or maybe nostalgia for young love that has faded. Either way, I'm into the album. Not engrossed by the reverb-heavy voice, the lack of empty spaces, the molasses tempo — but, y'know, I'm appreciating it.

But Band of Horses loses me on track four. It's titled "Detlef Schrempf." Hoops fans know that he's a German-born, retired NBA'er who played for Seattle and Portland. Bridwell sings the song with the same earnestness he does the rest, littering it with lines like "I just can't look at you any other way." It's doubtful that line is directed at the renowned three-point shooter, but suddenly the whole damn album feels like a ruse. My distaste for the band is cemented a couple tracks later when Bridwell suddenly breaks out a Southern accent on the country tune (send-up?) "Marry Song." 2 stars —Wade Tatangelo

Long Road Out of Eden
EAGLES
(Eagles Recording Company)

Long Road Out of Eden comes 28 years after the Eagles last studio album, The Long Run.

Long time.

After spending more than a decade gathering for lucrative world tours, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit — the four Eagles still flying — have unsheathed a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Eden is an ambitious effort: a two-disc set (at a bargain price, available only at Wal-Mart) that showcases the members writing in different combinations. On the other hand, a fair amount of the music is pedestrian: Adult Contemporary ballads, breezy lite- and country-rock tunes, and a Walsh song ("Last Good Time in Town") that goes down smooth like Steely Dan (not a good fit).

On one side, you have Schmit putting his willowy tenor to "Do Something," the umpteenth iteration of "I Can't Tell You Why." Flip the script and you have the 10-minute title song, a Henley-driven epic along the lines of "Hotel California" that probingly delves into American decadence: "Met the ghost of Caesar on the Appian Way/ He said 'It's hard to stop this bingeing, once you get a taste/ But the road to empire is a bloody stupid waste."

The album begins seductively, with the hymn-like "No More Walks in the Woods," an environmental lament that finds the quartet singing the entire two-minute tune in rich, CSN-like harmony over wisps of acoustic guitar.

While the rest of the album is slickly produced, the Eagles don't employ much in the way of sonic artifice — they've ditched the drum-machine-driven stridency of Henley's best solo albums (they would've been insane not to), yet they haven't gone all rootsy and busted out the mandolins and fiddles. The band turned a deaf ear to stylistic trends — both outdated and resuscitated — and just made the album they wanted. Nothing particularly daring, mind you, but a big dose of new stuff for the group's still sizeable contingent of fans, a contingent that scampered over to Wal-Mart and bought enough copies for Eden to enter the Billboard album chart at No. 1. 3 stars —Eric Snider

This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2007.