Seattle’s Band of Horses have become one of indie rock’s most consistent acts since their inception almost 20 years ago. With five albums down and their forthcoming record, Things Are Great (March 4, BMG), on the way, the band shares their newest single “Lights.”
“Lights” finds Band of Horses embracing a power-pop flair with a romping rhythm that emerges from guitar feedback. Vocalist Ben Bridwell sings of “getting over the worst shit” as he details a wild night full of detectives and security guards, all with an infectious chorus: “When the lights turned on, the lights turned on/ There’s a security guard, security guard.”
Speaking on the background of the song, Bridwell says:
I was with my family at an indoor water park hotel. On my last day there, I was walking down the hall and this guy was like, “Ben?” It happened to be this dude that was producing the film that I was writing the score for. We met up in the family-friendly hotel bar which gets closed down by us at 10:00, at which point we then ended up in the parking lot. We get a little loose – nothing too crazy, but we ended up dodging security guards. Our story then goes on to when I’m back home and someone had broken into my house. With the cops that ended up being around, there were more people turning the lights on us, one way or another. At the parking lot of the hotel, it was the security guards turning them on to check on us out there and at home, it was the lights going on and off with these cops. I’m drawing metaphors here and there from these two stories. Also, things were going poorly for me at that time and that kind of peppers the entire track.
The album arrives five years after Tyler Ramsey and Bill Reynolds announced their departures from the band, with Matt Gentling and Ian MacDougal taking their places. The album has been described in press materials as “a return to their earlier work and the kind of raw ethos that lies at the heart of Band of Horses.”
Below, listen to “Lights” and revisit our ranking of the 10 best Band of Horses songs here. You can preorder Things Are Great ahead of its March 4 release here.