Band of Horses: "Compliments"

“If there’s a God up in the air / Someone looking over everyone / At least you’ve got something to fall back on,” Ben Bridwell reasons in the chorus to “Compliments,” and when your face lifts from your palm I’ve got bad news: you may have outgrown Band of Horses.

Don’t get me wrong, in no way do I find God a lyrical taboo. If there’s something at the bottom of it, I will shovel my way through just about anyone’s pile of spiritual gaze. And I am absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain that heaven is the raddest place on earth. But it just doesn’t work here.

“Is there a ghost in my house?” Bridwell asked on the band’s last lead single, and maybe it had gloss but there was something big-boned, almost childlike about it. I imagine that if Win turned down the Wild Things trailer “Ghost” would have made a solid Plan B. “Compliments,” on the other hand, feels less wide-eyed than red-eyed—less curious or notion-fearing than “You ever been to church…high?”

The melody works (on a sort of reverbed-out Monkees tip) but is obvious to the point of evaporation, and the guitars lean “stadium built” with this same lack of charm. But it’s Bridwell’s lyrics that carry the song’s ultimate curse. “What are people even for?” he asks as the second chorus fades, “Does anybody even care? / I bet you get a lot of compliments down there.” I’ll take that bet.