Ben Bridwell, Rob Hampton and Creighton Barrett

We were at Avast here in Seattle, where most of the new Band of Horses album Cease to Begin was recorded and mixed, and left with a bit of time on his hands, singer/songwriter Ben Bridwell kept himself busy with a crossword puzzle. He burned through most of it in just a few minutes. And though I was trying to focus on the music I was hearing for the first time, it was hard not to notice that the kid I’d met years ago (as a member of Carissa’s Wierd and as the person putting out CW records through his Brown Records imprint), and whose music I’d loved for so long, wasn’t just a great musician but also had a remarkable facility with words. And, of course, it made sense: he’s a talented lyricist. From the concisely conveyed sense of interconnection (and longing for it) in “Ode to LRC,” to the emotional complexity achieved through simple means in “Detlef Schrempf,” the new album is filled with examples. And the album’s opener, the soaring, athemic “Is There a Ghost” shows the band, together, at the height of their considerable powers.

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Close friends and family have come and gone—some far too early. Necessarily shot through with these experiences, the songs on Cease to Begin are strikingly beautiful, if less elliptical and more straightforward, dealing with the reconciliation of attachment and detachment, the strength that’s found through suffering, and the understanding that we are as significant as we are insignificant.