Saw Band of Horses last night at a fairly new joint in NYC called Terminal 5. My buddies in the band Scratcher said they were a must see, so I had to check them out. Terminal 5 is a pretty cool venue, ran by the people who do Mercury Lounge, Bowery Ballroom, Webster Hall and the Williamsburg Music Hall. It’s very large open space with 2 balconies looking down at the stage-it kinda looks like the old Warehouse club in Manchester run by Factory Records. The sound needs to be tweaked, it’s pretty boomy until the room fills up. A band called Drone opened up, and they were exactly their name-a drone. They sucked real bad and almost put me right to sleep.
Band of Horses came out looking like they were right out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, so I was ready to hate them-but they turned out to be OK. They were pretty good instrumentalists, 3 guitars, bass, keyboards and drums. The singer was OK, but kinda got grating after a while with his Polyphonic Spree-sounding high-pitched voice. They were kinda like an even more hippy version of Radiohead. Very moody and interesting, overall pretty good, but they had no hooks and no discernable choruses. I don’t see how they are so popular without the choruses and hooks. Actually, strike that. It’s music for pot smokers, that’s why it’s popular. They are sure to be popular with the whole hippy, Grateful Dead, jam band crowd.