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At its best, Arms is a pleasant album, one that sounds good on the surface or as background music. For most bands, that's perfectly acceptable. But for a group like Band Of Horses--whose ambitions have always intersected with being meaningful and transcendent, too--somehow just being acceptable makes Arms fall short.
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The impression is that the same tale is being told on every track, just with slightly adapted words each time, and this too undoubtedly contributes to the sense of overall blandness with which this album is suffused.
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Infinite Arms further fluctuates between the vigorous (NW Apt.), the understatedly pretty (Evening Kitchen) and the yawn-inducing (title tune).
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The band leans on plain, incredibly legible songs that have little to hide behind; successful in a gestural way, but little more. And the songwriting of the frontman Ben Bridwell, always a little obtuse, has begun to decompose, like sketches drawn from faded memories.
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Infinite Arms is a surprisingly understated affair.
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It’s painful to say, but Band of Horses’ third release makes one long for the proverbial record-label suit saying, “I don’t hear a single.’’
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Under The RadarThis is a lot of doom and gloom for a band that remains listenable and enjoyable, and Infinite Arms deserves to be played a few times to hear the fine musicianship and occasional transcendental moment. [Spring 2010, p.62]
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Infinite Arms just feels less tender, less personal, more twang-by-numbers than the last couple, despite its familiar sound and many of the same principals.
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Slow songs aren’t bad in themselves, but boring slow songs are the worst. Anyway, Infinite Arms has its share of mid-to-fast tempos, too. Again, though, the songs are of inconsistent quality.
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Infinite Arms is a confusing, schizophrenic work. Several of its earlier tracks find the band clicking like never before and exploring fresh ideas while sounding more aerodynamic than ever. But so much else seems to have been haphazardly thrown together, as if the band never even entered the same room during the recording process.
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On the whole Infinite Arms is an album buried under the weight of its own sound. It's hard to know how this album could have sounded with less ham-handed production, but as it stands the mix here feels like some sleight of hand.
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Infinite Arms fumbles its Birks like a weary hippie.
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MojoWhen the opening track of this third album features CSN-style harmonising about hotel lobbies, you wonder if they're trying a little too hard to sound like a burnt-out folk rock supergroup from 1971. [June 2010, p. 92]
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Infinite Arms isn’t nearly as charming nor nearly as emotive as the band’s other work. It’s an image of a band that’s exhausted their aesthetics to a point of sterility, and it’s going to take a lot of soul-searching and reinvention to figure out where to go next.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 38 out of 64
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Mixed: 20 out of 64
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Negative: 6 out of 64
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Oct 2, 2010
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Nov 19, 2020Fantastically soothing and enjoyable in every conceivable way. Worth an entire play-through.
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Apr 21, 2011