This reimagined sound pulls at your mind and forces you out of bed as you just can’t stay trapped under the covers.
Opening on samba drums, a thick and brooding bass is quick to join the mix, not letting the drums have time to breathe fully before they come together. Add to this the fuzzy and echoing guitar riffs, and you have a sound reminiscent of the disorientating and ever-changing intensity of a fever.
From making a song that is literally about having a fever to their name being a tongue-in-cheek questioning of why so many bands reference horses in their own names, Why Horses? are brimming with a teasing and playful energy. This band feels free in this space to experiment, able to say yes to the different directions they want to play in. They embrace their penchant for the fun and dramatic in their performance of the track, where their vocalist, Gabriel Lester, embraces the feeling of having a fever not only sonically but visually. Lester shows this through clutching his head, swaying on his feet and holding onto mic stands to keep balance but when that fails, ends up on his back at the feet of the audience as the crushing and culminating sounds of the band leave him wiped.
However, while the song sits in this odd and cheeky space, there is still the fact that what the audience are jamming out to are the laments of a fever-ridden person who’s dealing with it on his own. Just past the halfway mark of this track, the lyrics seem to point to this directly, Lester droning that he’s “still got a fever and no one's here and no one hears me”. Despite being a song, the very thing you are meant to hear, no one seems to be truly listening to what he is saying; instead, they are swept up by the absurdity of the concept and the glistening riffs from the guitars.
In this strange space where people are dancing to the sound of another person’s pain, there is a comment made on the sincerely made music that comes from an artist’s ‘pains', which are then consumed for the listeners' enjoyment and at times their own escapism. What seems at first an odd and comical topic for a song shows itself to be a possible meta-critique of the commercialisation of artists' pain.
Why Horses?, on their second single, show clear breadth both in their sound and their topics, going from the romantics of falling in love with someone you already know to the more off-kilter sound of a fever taking over one's mind and body. Who knows what can be expected from them next?
Ella Wilson-Coates
Image: Fred Willis @fred.willis2005
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