"THE GREAT SALT LAKE" BAND OF HORSES (2006)

For the next 30 days, I’ll be taking the #AprilAcrossAmerica challenge, picking one song a day as I make my way across the country and across genres at the same time.

Day 25: Salt Lake City, UT

The closest I ever got to Salt Lake City was Park City. But I feel strangely close to it after hearing this track again. While the song is known to actually be about incidents that have occurred in both Lake Murray, SC and Salt Lake City, UT, the power of the song is that it transports the listener to a different time and place. It feels like we’re there. Band of Horses wrote a song that recounts memories and people like a page ripped out of someone’s journal.

With its unforgettable opening guitar riff and Ben Bridwell’s sky-high tenor vocals, “The Great Salt Lake” has the add significance of being the song that helped put Band of Horses on the map. An earlier recording of the song appeared on the band’s first EP, which caught the attention of Sam Beam (Iron & Wine). Band of Horses ended up becoming the opening act for Iron & Wine’s upcoming tour, and the rest is history.

“Well, if you find yourself falling apart, Well, I am sure I could steer The great salt lake.”

"NO ONE'S GONNA LOVE YOU" BAND OF HORSES (2007)

Each day in December, I’ll be reflecting back on a song from the 2000’s. The decade saw the return of post-punk and the popularization of folk music, all while some of music’s biggest acts gained their indie footing. Thankfully, it’s a period that I can look back at fondly without cringing. #31DaysOf2000sSongs

In my senior year of high school, there was a place that I ran off to a handful of times with classmates of mine. It was called Rockwood Park, a scenic state park that was always closed well before the hour we sneaked in. We’d park off to the side of the road, late at night and scurry through a trail with beer and whisky in backpacks. Our destination was a clearing, a big meadow that overlooked the Hudson River. The reflection of the moon on the water was magical. It was like a sepia-tone photograph for us to remember these years before we all went our separate ways to college. The Cease to Begin album cover — and the aura of Band of Horses — remind me of those nights, particularly the song “No One’s Gonna Love You”.

The instrumentation, pacing and melody force a reflective mood on me every time I hear this track. It doesn’t matter how distracted or busy I may be, “No One’s Gonna Love You” slows me down and commands my attention. Ben Bridwell’s tenor vocals have this way of soaring through the air, creating room for the guitars to establish the mood underneath. One guitar riff runs steadily and insistently, while the other delicately trickles upwards and downwards. Like much of the Band of Horses catalog, the strength of “No One’s Gonna Love You” is the atmosphere it creates for the listener.

“We're reeling through an endless fall. We are the ever-living ghost of what once was.”

"THE FUNERAL" BAND OF HORSES (2006)

One of the most powerful things about music is emotional dimensionality. And in music history, you can point to dozens of songs that teeter back and forth between the quiet and reflective and the sonic and voracious. But in my opinion, few do it as well as Band of Horses’ “The Funeral”. Death is a complicated thing, representing emotions as far apart from each other as the two musical states played out on the record.

“At every occasion, I'll be ready for the funeral.”