Friday, December 13, 2013

Band Review: Benhur


This is getting posted very late. Some of that does relate to today being a busy day, but a big part of it was difficulty in listening to the band's music.

The video for "Lay Me Down" is pretty easy to find, and I was able to listen to "Walk On Through" pretty easily as well, but things that I thought I had found would not come up when I tried to find them again. They are on Spotify, but searches were frequently fruitless.

I think part of this is getting confused between searching on Benhur and Ben Hur, both of which I did multiple times, but a big part of it is similarly named search results. In addition to results related to Ben Hur (mainly movie, but the book could come up too), there are other musicians, including four unrelated albums on the profile when you find Benhur. And while Benhur is apparently only the title for Allahindan Bul's album, it seems to be the band name for the Sabor Latino AND the reggae guy, which is really only to say that my listening experience was disjointed and frustrating separate from the music, and so I still feel like I don't have a handle on it.

I can tell you that the albums that are definitely for this Benhur are Tryst from 2008, and this year's Between Flower and Hive. I have focused more on the more recent music, and I think it has a more mature sound, but I do like "Start Again" from Tryst pretty well.

The more recent music is generally kind of quiet, a little downbeat but still hopeful. "Walk on Through" is a little more rock - there is a beat that reminds me a bit of the Strokes or Queens of the Stone Age, and the band does have some guitar chops, but then is goes back to something quieter.

Still, the easiest starting place is the video for "Lay Me Down" which in muted sounds and colors goes somewhere you weren't expecting, and it goes where it should and comes out right, but there is still pain in that, which works with the song.





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