Band of Horses 

Between the filler music that’s piped in over the P.A. and the blaring of Joe Walsh’ ‘Rocky Mountain High’ that welcomed the band to the stage, there was the first quiet of the evening – a thousand people chatting all at once and then all of them noticing the pause. Cicadas, crickets and the natural backdrop that’s Griffith Park filled in the silence. Band of Horses took to the stage and enveloped the surrounding area, the crowd and the natural flow of the evening and steered it towards their own idea of the wild. 

Material from their newest, ‘Infinite Arms,’ made their presence known and there were loud exultations for stuff that might sound OK on a studio album, but great in a live setting. Band of Horses, the once Seattle based, now South Carolina band, find themselves at an interesting threshold – Ben Bridwell calls this album, the third album with the moniker Band of Horses on the cover, he really calls it the band’s first. The reason is that this is the first time there’s a set group of players who are making music and it shows. On stage at the Greek, the band plowed through stuff from the new album, like “Laredo” and “Compliments,” but they made their way back to ‘Cease to Begin’ and ‘Everything All the Time.’ Eventually they were skirting the quiet towards the end of their set, but it was all incredibly honest, even for such a big venue and such a big band.