Coming full circle, Bridwell has even revived his old Brown label so he and the band can release it themselves, in conjunction with Fat Possum and Columbia. They financed the record themselves. They own the masters. These particular Horses are done wearing saddles.
The night following their L’Album de la Semaine taping, Band of Horses are playing a gig at La Flèche d’Or in the eastern part of Paris. The venue’s location originally housed the Charonne train station, which operated a Paris-London route in the late-19th and early 20th century. In the ’90s, a group of former students from a Parisian art college transformed the space into a concert hall, and it’s become a prime venue for up-and-coming bands of every musical persuasion.
Tonight’s show is at capacity, and there’s still a line of people stretching down the block hoping to be let inside. Those lucky enough to have made it in are dripping with sweat from the room’s sauna-like atmosphere. The chatter is deafening, and you can hear a disproportionate number of American accents cutting through the din. Every American college student studying abroad in Paris seems to have converged.
Ramsey opens the show with a laid-back set of acoustic tunes. And then after a short break, the full band strolls onstage to thunderous applause. Even though Bridwell has a fan at the foot of the stage blowing air up into his face—I imagine it’s the same sort of fan used to blow back Faith Hill’s hair in music-video shoots—he’s sweating profusely, just like everyone else.
The band delivers the louder tunes with feral ferocity, whipping the crowd into a frenzy, only to tug back the reins at just the right moments. On the organ-driven, slow-burning “Marry Song,” Bridwell and Monroe harmonize with pitch-perfect ease, facing each other bromantically while they sing. Bridwell smiles, relishing the sound of the vocal interplay and the opportunity to perform with his best friends. There’s no posturing here. This is real music, played with real feeling.
Toward the end of the show, the band plays “No One’s Gonna Love You,” in which Bridwell repeatedly sings, “No one’s gonna love you more than I do.” I reach out and squeeze my pregnant wife’s hand, letting the song do the talking. The French couple to my right is violently perfecting the style of kissing their country supposedly invented.
“I didn’t set out to write a love song that sounds that sappy,” Bridwell assured me during our earlier conversation. “I’m a fucking dude. But when it taps you on the shoulder, it’s like you’re more of a pussy trying to disguise it, or trying to make up something that’s so weird no one can understand it. Be a man. If it’s trying to be written that way, write it and move on to the next song.”