Released in March of 2006, Band of Horses debut Everything All the Time made good on the

promise hinted at in their early shows and demos. The band went from early shows opening for

friends Iron & Wine, to playing on The Late Show with David Letterman by July, and being nominated

as one of ten finalists (along with Joanna Newsom, Beirut, Tom Waits, and, the eventual winner,

Cat Power) for the Shortlist Music Prize for that same year. And the record was well-received

critically, with celebratory press in Spin, Entertainment Weekly, NY Times, Harp, Billboard, Pitchfork,

Magnet, NME, Uncut, and a slew of others. Not a bad place to start.

For a lot of reasons, Cease to Begin is the perfect title for this new record. Not only do the

songs themselves weave this theme through the record, but stopping and starting anew is also

a reflection of the past year and a half for Band of Horses. Though they worked with producer

Phil Ek again, as they did on Everything All the Time, much has changed between the fairly

recent then and now. There have been band members who have come and gone, including Mat

Brooke, who left the band to pursue other interests and his own band. For core members Ben

Bridwell, Rob Hampton and Creighton Barrett, there has been a move from Seattle, WA to Mt.

Pleasant, SC, a relocation that had been planned for some time so that they could all be closer

to their families. And, close friends and family have come and gone some far too early. Necessarily

shot through with these experiences, the songs on Cease to Begin are strikingly beautiful, if less

elliptical and more straightforward, with more sophisticated arrangements than the last record.

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Cease to Begin - CD

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