29th December 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Alright, I’ll get the moment of amusement about the fact that US stoner / prog / space rock / psychedelic indie trio We Are Space Horses have a member named Kevin Vanderhoof out of the way before getting down to business – the business of getting to grips with this expansive seven-track EP, which sees the band really explore texture and detail across its duration. I make no apologia for my flippancy, since first and foremost, I’m here to offer a detailed and serious critique, and a small amount of levity is no bad thing.
The first track, ‘To Let Go… Absolutely’ is representative, beginning with a screed of noise which backs off to leave us with a simple acoustic guitar and wafting falsetto vocal. The vibe is very much 70s prog, accentuated by some bold guitar breaks over the song’s six-and-a-half-minute duration. It’s not so much leaning on this artist or that, so much as assimilating the broader oeuvre.
Bass and drum-led ‘Haunt’ mines some blued-based seems with some gutsy Led Zep-inspired riffology delivered with some serious swagger. The contemporary production values and overall gritty heft places it alongside the likes of Rival Sons. Now, on a personal level, I’m in two minds about the latest heavy blues revival and in particular about Rival Sons, and this comes from the perspective of someone who spent their early teens almost exclusively at pub gigs watching blues acts, electric and acoustic, and seeing countless blues artists in York around 2005, not least of all because every other pub was host to live acoustic blues at that time. And I learned you can have too much of a good thing.
We Are Space Horses are unquestionably a good thing, and that’s a fact, and best of all, when they transcend beyond the blues template to wander exploratory space, as they do on the meandering but beefy ‘God is a Ghost’ they’re hugely exciting.
If ‘Ketoacidosis’ is a bit standard alt-rock and is the sound of black-shirt wearing beard-sporting clean progressive metal, it is at least well-executed: there can be absolutely no doubting these guys’ musical competence or their capacity for dynamic structures, and the songs across the album as a whole are imbued with palpable emotional sincerity. ‘Stale Skies’ thunders in with an intro that’s pure Joy Division before pairing off towards something starker, sparser, more 80s AOR, but stretching its way boldly into more contemporary prog. Clean chords strike off in different directions as the bass rolls and strolls, moves and grooves before lunging in with some chunky distortion.
The vogue for epic last tracks may have become somewhat predictable of late, but I really can’t complain. Way back in the 80s, even, the killer epic longer last song by way of a closer became, for me, the mark of an album that was special. And of course, slower: from Duran Duran’s ‘The Chauffeur’ to The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Some Kind of Stranger’, the extended, emotion-tugging closer emerged as a thing and over time, it’s become more pronounced, although I won’t suggest more indulgent – bands have simply created space to extend beyond their limits to deliver spectacular album finishes. And this is a spectacular finish to a spectacular album.
Apologia is bold, varied, and ambitious, and finds the band taking risks. More often than not, they pull them off, too, making for an album that’s bold, confident, and exciting.
AA
AA
