[Album Review] Band of Horses takes it easy on ‘Why Are You OK’

Band of Horses

“Why Are You OK”

(Interscope Records)

Band of Horses takes it easy on “Why Are You OK,” wordy songs rooted in domestic situations that pleasantly glide but rarely soar.

Producer Jason Lytle from Grandaddy gives Ben Bridwell’s tunes a trebly treatment, adding sonic minutiae without causing clutter, sometimes resembling carefully arranged, faux low-fi.

Bridwell spent the years since 2012’s “Mirage Rock” helping to raise four daughters and there are plenty of lyrical references to life at home -- idyllic (“sitting on a bearskin rug, listening to grandpa talk”), nearly welcoming (“let me put you up in the guesthouse, we got a great couch, I found it sitting on the sidewalk”) or more troubled (“getting me arrested was the strangest way of showing me that you're mine.”)

“Dull Times/The Moon” is the Floydish extended opener and takes care of most of the distortion on the album, which then veers between other spacey landscapes and country-pop combinations with indie sheens.

A return of sorts to sounds from their beginnings, “Why Are You OK” may be the start of Band of Horses’ transition to a different phase. (AP)