Heteronyms, vol. III

Band of Horses - Monsters [mp3]

It took me a while (have I already said this?), but I came around to Band of Horses. Everything All The Time is a gloriously realized, cohesively crystalline record, the kind I can enjoy start-to-finish. I like best how it sits somewhere between the indoors and outside, the cyclical melodies (no doubt a relic of Carissa's Wierd) suggesting bedroom walls, while spacious strumming and reverb à la My Morning Jacket translate to stretches of field. In this way, it's comforting without being restrictive, exploring at its own slow, steady pace, "Monsters" sounding typically warm, organic and stately.

Scared of Chaka - Monsters [mp3]

Potential is an over-used word, one that I'm wary of implementing or believing. Scared of Chaka, I think, was one of the few bands whose potential I could hear, I could believe. It was only really realized on the fantastic "All My Friends Are Ghosts," a minute and a half of ecstasy, but elsewhere it made itself known: the gentle melody (they would later become Shins, after all) handled wrongly, the build and the sweet, organ-tinged outro. They were a pop band stuck in a New Mexico garage with old punk records - yes, I think that's what it was.

Visit Band of Horses online, and buy Everything All The Time here.

Visit Scared of Chaka online, and buy Tired of You here.

Past Heteronyms.