Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
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Free Music Notes for Cease to Begin
Free Music Review: Please me Awesome
Hit: 4 Stars
A friend introduced me and I was hooked. Everything All the Time is good, but this album is better. (I would actually rate 4 and 1/2 stars.) Cease is more mature, balanced, fun, and better crafted than Everything. They are a great band and I never get tired of Bridwell's vocals!Free Music Review: LOVE IT
Hit: 5 Stars
After falling in love with Everything All the Time this summer and seeing BOH in concert, I greatly anticipated the release of Cease to Begin. I love it, the tracks are different from their first album, yet retain what I love so much about BOH (mainly Ben's achingly beautiful vocals, and the melodic fluidity of each song).
SEE THEM LIVE, their music translates perfectly to a live performance.
Free Music Review: Good but...
Hit: 3 Stars
This is a solid follow up to Everything All the Time. However it lacks the anthems that made Everything spectacular. Cease to Begin is by no means a bad album, in fact it probably comes in third for sophomore albums this year behind LCD Soundsystem and The Arcade Fire not bad company to be in. In fact this album is infinitely better than Bloc Parties Weekend in the City in my opinion. However the album lacks a song as strong as Funeral. Is there a Ghost? is a great song, but the album never again quite matches the greatness of that song. There are several good songs on here and all of the songs are in the solid to good range and no bad songs to speak of. However it lacks the anthems that made Everything all the time so appealing.
Key Tracks
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For fans of Neil Young, My Morning Jacket and Flaming Lips
Free Music Review: More mature and confident than "Everything All the Time"... very solid.
Hit: 4 Stars
"Everything All the Time", this band's 2006 debut, was a very strong indie rock album that didn't break much new ground, but did everything right... uh, all the time. The songs are so infectious that it has remained in heavy rotation in my CD player, computer, and MP3 player since I got it.
It is for these reasons that I have greatly anticipated "Cease to Begin", and overall, I'm very pleased with the result. Perhaps I should have waited to run the album five or ten times before reviewing, but... here I am.
First, let me say that there is no equivalent to "Funeral" or "Great Salt Lake", in terms of an anthemic song that serves as a centerpiece for the rest of the record - at least not one I've identified yet. "Is There a Ghost?" is catchy and insistent, but I don't know if it will hook me the same way; others may well respond to it differently. "Marry Song" is the song that seems most likely to get repeated spins, but it's a ballad, not a rocker. The main difference this time around is the confidence of the band in playing the songs. They sound a lot more comfortable with themselves, and Bridwell was definitely more comfortable in exploring the range of his songwriting this time. Where "Everything All the Time" could be taken as a 'start-to-finish' type of listening experience, its strength was in its individual songs. This record, on the other hand, is best suited as a complete-play-through, stream-of-consciousness type of record. It should not be judged solely by the type of record that "Everything..." was.
In brief, the record is very, very good, and highly recommended, and it receives four stars from me for the same reason that "Everything..." did: it ain't long enough!
Free Music Review: Horses back with a fury!
Hit: 4 Stars
"If you haven't heard Band of Horses' first release "Everything All The Time", then stop reading this and go buy that album immediately, then come back and buy this one. This band found their beautiful, unique sound on their first album, and it only gets better here.
Cease to Begin picks up where the first album left off, and it opens with a bang on the very first track "Is There a Ghost". From this track alone, you know the album is going to be top-notch. There is a perfect mixture of upbeat heavier material and slower ballads with beautifully haunting harmonized vocals [see "St. Augustine on 1st album, "Marry Song" and "Window Blues" on this album]. The most notable track is "Island on the Coast" which opens with a furious display of guitar speed-picking and does not let up.
The only con to this album is its length, which is 10 songs, one of which is an instrumental clocking in at :58 and serving as a sort of brief interlude to the second half of the album. Cease to Begin definitely leaves you wanting more, as did the first album, but a short album with no filler is most certainly preferrable to one with several more mediocre tracks. This album is 100% solid material and you will not be disappointed."